


Rose Lalonde and Her Untimely Death

by oxfordRoulette



Series: Underworld [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Astronomy, College, Consensual Blood Drinking, F/F, Florida, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Mild Sexual Content, Non-Consensual Blood Drinking, Original Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-04 20:17:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3087722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxfordRoulette/pseuds/oxfordRoulette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You meet an ancient girl thin as bones who pushes you into her starry, dying world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Her Untimely Meeting

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Роуз Лалонд и Её Безвременная Кончина (Rose Lalonde and Her Untimely Death by oxfordRoulette)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4713650) by [Mr_Scapegrace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mr_Scapegrace/pseuds/Mr_Scapegrace)



> This is officially part 3 of the Underworld series, but you can read it first if you'd like! This story takes place way before the other two.
> 
> Also, there will be a slightly bigger pause between updates on this one, because of two reasons. One: Unlike literally every other part of this series, I am out of my element with the 'theme' of this fic and actually need to do research. Two: I'm not done with my huge ass Jadekat fantasy longfic yet and that thing is like my precious baby-child by this point and it gets first priority. It's the kind of story I would pull out pictures of from my wallet to show the coworkers. Speaking of which, if you're waiting for this fic to update and have like 5 hours to kill reading about some kind of romantic D&D game gone horribly wrong, [go take a look](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1786246/chapters/3827995).
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy!

You rub the edge of the pen on the apple of your cheek, an impatient tic you use to signify ‘I am so fucking done with this riveting conversation.’ Unfortunately, your dearest brother is a thousand miles away, meaning your subtle charms are lost over a land-line. You can’t just say adieu and hang up, however, because you are on a very important mission tonight and don’t want the boy to rat you out to your roommate.

“- and I’m just sayin’ here, you’re going to get all those Floridian babes with southern twangs and I’m sitting here doing what the Lord intended: living monogamously, heterosexually, and fur-affinitively.”

“Sorry, I must have missed that.” you say, lacing your voice in a happy marriage of monotone and boredom.

He doesn’t catch your little hint, or more likely, just ignores you. “Fur-affinitively, you know, because I’m dating a furry. I’m yiffing a furry.”

You are fairly certain Jade Harley does not own a fursuit and is simply rather enthusiastic about the subculture, but you won’t tell Dave that. It’ll break his heart. Besides, any bedroom activities are between the two of them and the two of them alone, and you won’t bring judgment down upon them. Not one single ounce of it. Not even if Dave is the one with the fursona.

“Ha,” says Dave. “Now you’re thinking about it.”

“Speaking of yiffing,” you say, quickly. “Don’t you have a date to run off to? She drove all the way down to lovely Texas for this night, for her to run fingers through your adorable frosted tipped emo bangs.”

“Oh, shit. Thanks for keeping me on my yiff schedule, Rose. You sure know how to take care of a guy.”

You straighten up. This is it, the climax, the part where you get to hang up and focus on your priorities. “Of course I do.”

“Toodles.”

“Kisses.”

You hear a ‘click’ on the other end, leaving you alone with the joyous song of silence. It’s been three days since you lost... _it_ , and it’s the first night your roommate has left you for the loving embrace of fall break. You just hope, no, pray, that no one else had gotten to it first. Dave’s call was a distraction, a risk you picked up on, and now you fear it might be too late.

You grab your flashlight from under your mattress, throw on the only sweatshirt you own (it’s in the blackest of blacks, of course, the only acceptable shade of comfort clothing), and step out into the honors dorm hallway. No one is out, due to the fact that it’s the first break of freshman year and you’re far too enamored with solitude to fly to Reno with Mother like it’s hip to do, and you sigh with a wonderful relief. There must be no witnesses to your crime, no followers to see what you’ve lost, no rumors generated from the item you’re searching for.

You make your way outside (the cloudy night your cloak, the black sweatshirt your shield, the darkened flashlight your sheathed dagger) and towards the small cluster of trees on the minuscule flat behind the buildings. Once you are safely behind the cover of some particularly rotund shrubbery, you click your flashlight on. You believe it was around here where you dropped it, left them lying on the dirt in drunken neglect, left your shame for all to see.

Well, not _all_ since you’re fairly certain nobody really comes back here, especially not at midnight during break. But if anyone sees this, you will be doomed to the life of a forced social pariah, mocked by your inferiors and ostracized by the faculty.

Your flashlight shines over the buried roots of some tree or another and… ah ha, there they are, just the way you left them.

Your perfectly preserved squiddles panties, with Jelly Jimmy and the word ‘Saturday’ silk-screened on the posterior fabric.

You’re not sure how you managed to lose your underthings in the trees. You think you were fairly inebriated during the big freshman blowout party after classes finished, and went to go urinate outside and… They fell off in a drunken haze, apparently. If anyone were to see these, to know that Rose Lalonde, Queen of the Dammed English Textbooks, left her bloomers in the forest while a drunken mess… Well, you do not want to think of the consequences.

You scoop them up and situate them in your front pocket. Your panties are going to need six OxiCleans before they are wearable again, but you have a soft spot for Jelly Jimmy and want him on your rear every other Saturday. It’s just not a good Saturday without Jelly Jimmy.

You hear a turgid snap behind you, then a muffled, “Oh. Oops.” 

It sounds like it’s coming from behind a layer of thick velvet. You’ve seen enough horror films to know where this scenario is heading— virgin co-ed freshman, alone in the woods past midnight as a predator approaches. You will not become a stereotype! You will not stand in terror and scream for a solid minute before getting a ligament violently removed. No, you are an intelligent, strong young lady who could talk her way out of a steel box.

You spin around, smoothly, a sly and confident smirk painted on your face, and say, “Why, hello, what are you doing on this fine— Oh my, what are you wearing?”

You visceral reaction was actually, ‘Oh shit, there is an insane young woman who probably haunts local convent meetings for like-minded obscure sacrificial pagan mythos obsessors standing right in front of me,’ but that managed to come out as the simple yet effective question of why she is wearing that cloak.

Despite your flashlight shining directly at her, the cloth draped around her is so dark that if she stood in a room without any source of light you would still be able to pick her out as clearly as if she were wearing glittery sequins. It’s unnerving— a black chunk of non-existence in an already dark setting. You can only see her wrists and hands and the bottom of her face, her hood casting a nighttime shadow over her expression.

Speaking of which, her skin is a rippling contrast of white and brown, etched in patterns all over what’s visible of her body. Ah, that’s some sort of pigment disorder, although your vocab fails you since the ‘hard science’ medical terms were never your strong point. She is very, very tall and very, very thin, and if the black cloak didn’t tip you off that you have been suddenly thrust into a creepy pasta, those two physical descriptors sure did.

She looks down at herself, her arms raising a bit which ends up splitting the cloak, revealing a rather normal black dress which one would wear to a club.

“It’s fashion.” she says.

You should probably start running. But you are also very curious, and usually that aspect of yourself wins out. Fuck, it’s still winning.

“Good to know.” you reply.

“So, um, look here,” says the woman. “I’m going to do something to you rather necessary for my well being, and it might hurt you. Slightly. But I have band aids in neon colors, and you don’t have to fret about tetanus or any of these other odd human disorders, so it should be okay.”

She has a very thick accent. You’re shamed that you have no idea where it’s from, nor can you take an educated guess. It’s like her voice is trying to jump over all the vowels, but is forced against its will to spend time on unfortunate sounds like long ‘oh’s and short ‘ah’s. “Excuse me?” you say.

She raises her hands, waves them at you. Her mouth gapes like she wants to explain something to you, but can’t summon up the words to describe whatever elaborate scenario led up to this point. She sighs, then your vision goes pitch dark as she swoops down on you in a flurry of impossible midnight robes.

Cloth wraps around you, layers of silk squeeze your arms and you smell the nostalgic aroma of spring evenings and bonfires in the cusp of her shoulder. She bends your knees, dipping you to the ground, her arms strong around your body, and the idea works its way into your distracted brain that you should probably scream.

You unhinge your jaw to work up a fine, maidenly yell, but the woman’s mouth cloaked in shadow twists and she slaps a hand over your own maw. You appear to be firmly under her control, dipped like a swooning bodice ripper, and you find it all rather romantic. You can’t say what you can see of her is hard on the eyes, after all.

You’ve clearly been reading too much vampire fanfiction. This woman is most probably an insane axe murderer with a romance digest fetish. You take the time to imagine Dave speaking at your funeral after she dismembers you, and that thought is more terrifying than what you’re currently facing down.

You can’t dish out some pathetic, measly English major flails at her, so you decide the next best move is to narrow your eyes in a disapproving yet motherly manner. She does not react to this, and you wonder if she can even see out that hood. It looks remarkably inconvenient. She looks around, and you assume she's making a final check for witnesses. How assuring. “I’m sorry, but as I mentioned before, this is rather necessary. I promise there will be no permanent damage to your mortal vessel.”

‘Mortal vessel’ was an interesting choice of words, not one you would have picked yourself. She tilts your head up, using the hand over your lips to do so, and leans down into a very sensitive part of your neck. As you feel her breath pool against your throat, and as you try not to laugh with how very ticklish you feel, a burning question manages to push its way out of your lungs and into the stranger’s hand.

“Mmmphm mmmnmmmp, mppph?”

She tilts your head back down, then removes her hand. “What?” she whispers.

“You wouldn’t happen to be an actual vampire, perchance, would you?” you whisper back. You wouldn’t want to ruin your once in a lifetime chance of running into a vampire of the womanly persuasion by attracting uncouth attention.

“Um… no.”

You open your mouth to scream for help, but your jaw muscles are dreadfully out of shape, so she slaps her hand over your lips before your maw can even open to an acceptable size.

“Never mind, I was. Not telling the truth. Of course, ha ha, you were right. I am absolutely a vampire. There has never been any doubt that I am definitely a vampire. I am a very attractive, mysterious lady vampire who is going to suck your blood and it will be very hot for your human sensibilities.”

A chill air blows into your frightened, painfully agape eyes and you shut them tightly. A childish reaction to fear, you’re ashamed your heart is even beating so fast. Dammit. Rosaline, you should have screamed your little lungs out when you had the chance, what were you even thinking? Now you’re facing your death in the abyss of your eyes closed shut, your body grappled by a young woman who very much needs to see a psychiatrist, and your three day old panties stuffed firmly in your sweatshirt pocket. What will the mortician think? You are going to have the worst funeral ever.

Your neck gets punctured. It feels like ten-thousand needles covered in poison, although that might just be your eldritch horror sensibilities talking. It mostly just hurts. Quite a bit. Ouchie.

When the blood begins to whisk itself out of you, you do something you’d never thought you’d do unironically:

You faint.


	2. Does Your Life Follow The Aarne–Thompson Classification System?

You wake up at 1:30 AM on a bench in front of your dorm, a bottle of Florida’s finest orange juice positioned firmly over your stomach, and a note in your hands that says in pristine Old English calligraphy: ‘My Sincerest Apologies I Hope You Like Neon Purple It Seemed Like A You Sort Of Color’. 

You think she was referring to the band-aid she put over your neck.

Three days, six thankfully negative lab tests for communicable diseases, and ten hundred furious Google searches for local vampire covens later, your dormmates return and classes resume. You don’t tell a soul about what happened, minus the nurses who gave you the tests of course, because who in the world would believe you? You’ve got friends here, sure, but you’re not close enough to anyone for them to unquestionably trust your ad hominem recounting of events. You also neglect to go to law enforcement about the whole thing, because what could they accomplish if they even believed you? You decide that you’ll only come forward about the whole thing if you discover another college student has befallen the same fate.

The first class which resumes after break is your Introduction to Astronomy class, the natural science credit you decided to get out of the way as a freshman so you wouldn’t have to slog through it years down the line. It’s boring as hell, but you didn’t expect much else. You’re also terrible at it, staying at a B+ average despite the amount of effort you put into the curriculum material which infuriates you to no end. Anyway, the professor decided that it would be ‘fun’ and ‘totally not a waste of your precious time’ to send the whole class on a field trip immediately after break.

You determine Kennedy Space Center is the campiest tourist trap this side of Disney World. Between the godawful astronaut mascots the Economics fraternity bros insisted on taking pictures with, a 3D simulation ride you’re convinced must have been planned in the late nineties yet the graphics were applied sometime in this decade, and the distinct lack of any of your sophisticated English major peers surrounding you, you have an absolutely terrible time. Thankfully, you’re not required to fulfill any extracurricular duties sans a worksheet you completed in a half hour, so you decide you’ll be spending your time taking a long lunch.

You go to the cafe with the least amount of populace filling up the seats, grab a tray, and make your way towards the sandwich buffet. It’s a ‘grab the sandwich that looks the least expired and pay at the end’ of thing, which is all the rage at cafeteria-esque “restaurants,” and you loom over the refrigerated display to search for something that isn’t completely-

Nimble fingers covered in brown and white skin are currently attempting to grab the Thanksgiving themed cranberry/turkey combination. You follow the hands up to a skinny arm, to a bad NASA t-shirt, to a delicately slender neck, and to bright green eyes-

-which you definitely don’t remember seeing the night this woman sucked your blood.

“You.” you say. 

She abandons the sandwich in horror.

She stares at you, her mouth slowly growing into the most perfect ‘O’ shape you’ve ever witnessed in your pitifully short life. She begins to laugh in a way that you would imagine the Queen of England laughing at tea parties with relatives she hated.

“Oh, look at the time,” she says, glancing at her bracelet. “It seems I must abscond! What a tragic coincidence. It appears we will never be able to relive the experiences we shared together. That is too bad.”

You glance down at her ‘Hello My Name Is’ nametag, which she nervously covers up. “Kanaya. Unique name. Is that your fake vampire name, for your fake vampire hobbies? I’m sure I can find out, as well as participate in other fine blackmail related activities, through the use of Google search.”

“There will be no ‘Google’ searching,” she says, using air quotes. My God, she actually used air quotes. “Not in this NASA center.”

You take out your smartphone for nefarious purposes. “I don’t know about that. I get excellent 4G reception, and I’m sure it can be done within five seconds. Oh, look at that, typing it in right now.”

You hit the search button on your application, and it takes you to the results as Kanaya says, “No, no, no, you are not ‘Google’ searching me, I insist you stop that behavior right now.”

As usual, the only relevant results are the first three items, which point to some archived New York Times articles from the fifties about someone named Kanaya kidnapping a minor U.S.S.R. astronomer for two days. You tap the hyperlink.

Kanaya is towering over your phone. You let her loom, it’s not like you could stop her if she tried, the woman is like a weeping willow. “Oh no. The information age will never let me die in anonymity, will it?”

Her statement implied she was actually the focus of the article. You skim it, scrolling down past ads and antique language, looking for a picture. She couldn’t actually be a vampire, could she? You’re not sure which option is better: You somehow got a vampire to suck your blood and claim they weren’t a vampire, or this attractive, wispy woman is actually eighty years of age.

“Oh,” you say, finding a headshot towards the bottom of the article. “That is, in fact, you. Isn’t it?” 

It has to be her, how many other women named Kanaya with pigment disorders and gaunt cheeks existed in the history of time? In the image she has a different haircut, all 50’s and the epitome of stereotypical housewife, but it’s still clearly her. You feel something between surprised and totally bored with this new development. If this were the foreseeable plot twist in a novel you were reading, you’d put the tome down immediately, but you can’t very well put down real life.

“Kidnapping a scientist? Shame on you.”

“Yes, I was unfortunately quite hungry and hunger makes me do extreme things. He ended up being unable to provide beyond what I performed on you, anyway.”

You put your phone into sleep. “So, you are a vampire. You can’t deny it: eternal youth, blood drinking, mysterious nightly stalks, the facts are all laid out. I’m a bit confused about the ability to be out and about in sunny Florida, but willing to accept discrepancies with traditional folklore. Perhaps you sparkle instead? Please, inform me.”

She runs a hand through her hair in what appears to be desperation. You seem to have caught her in the act. She can’t run now, and what can she do to you in a crowded tourist attraction? You will get your curiosity sated, damn it, and you will get it sated immediately.

“Why don’t we… eat lunch together?” She suggests, looking pointedly at the floor. “I will explain. If you promise me something.”

You grab the tacky Thanksgiving sandwich— you’ve always had a weakness for dime store cranberry sauce. “Oh, darling, you know I’d do anything for you. Name it.”

“Um. Right.” She says, grabbing the same sandwich. Apparently she doesn’t understand your sarcasm very well. You file that piece of information away for a later date. “I would like you to help me find an explorer.”

She follows you to the checkout, and you hand the cashier a twenty dollar bill. “An explorer? You won’t find many nowadays. You might not know this since you may or may not have been sitting vacantly in a coffin for centuries, but the vast majority of environments on Earth have been thoroughly delved into already.”

You stand near the cashier, and wait for her to pay for her own lunch. “I am very much aware. However, there are environments which have not been thoroughly delved into, although said environments lay beyond our atmosphere. I’m looking for one of those.”

You lead the march to the tables outside, Kanaya following like your shadow. “An astronaut?”

“Not necessarily, I can work with the more… theoretical side of things.”

You pick a table in the sun, to see if she shies away from the light or not. She does not, and she doesn’t start to shimmer either, and you thank your lucky stars _Twilight_ was not the be-all-end-all of vampire encyclopedias. You sit down, and she sits across from you. “Ah, so I see you have discerning taste. Do space-enthusiasts present a finer flavor?”

You believe yourself to have a fair amount of table manners, thanks to your mother, but you are a feral animal in comparison to the delicate way Kanaya opens her sandwich packaging. “Oh, right, you appear to be confusing me with one of your human folklore characters. The blood drinking event I occasionally partake in is not my main mode of feeding. It is, in fact, a shallow replacement for what I prefer, a small trick an old friend taught me in order to sustain myself in dry spells.”

“Hmm. Tell me more,” you attempt to open your sandwich in the same fashion as Kanaya, and fail spectacularly. The sticky adhesive gets caught on your fingers and it’s quite unfortunate. “An old friend who taught you how to drink blood in your secret vampire coven?”

Kanaya facepalms, hard. “No. An old friend who… Um. Well, let it suffice to say he delved into matters of the body and blood far more than I. And it turned out to be a more useful domain than my specialty.”

You roll around a chunk of some mysterious sandwich edible in your mouth. Whatever this is… is not cranberry sauce. “Specialty? So you’re some sort of space-related vampire figure?”

Kanaya takes a ridiculously small bite of her food. My God, you have to one-up her. “You know what? Yes. Yes I am.”

You take a smaller, politer bite of your mystery lunch, so small you can barely taste it on the tip of your tongue. “Prove it.”

She sets her sandwich down, folds her fingers together so she can rest her chin on them, and leans forward towards you. She says, in an alarmingly earnest voice, “I can’t. Not yet. I’ll die if I do.”

You do not set your sandwich down, instead deciding to continue taking tiny polite bites. “You expect me to just take you at your word? Please, look at it from my perspective, I’m floundering around in the dark here. You could be some nefarious, immortal demon looking to spread their empire from Earth to alien planets.”

“That is ridiculous.”

“Imagination, Kanaya. It’s a thing.” You take another bite, chewing slowly, watching suspense build up in her face. She seems to be quite invested in what you’re saying. You sigh after swallowing, resigned to your apparent fate. “Alright, I will help you find an explorer, although I would greatly appreciate it if you told me what you intend to do with them once I procure them for you.”

She smiles a little, and you get the impression she is being vague and mysterious simply to mess with you. “That would depend on their profession.”

You give up, taking a larger, yet still polite, bite of your sandwich. “So, darling, you must have absolutely riveting stories being an immortal being, tell me of them while we eat our light lunch.”

And to your surprise, she actually begins to regale to you a tale about an old lover. You don’t quite catch the name or title of her old girlfriend— it’s a long thing that starts with a ‘V’ sound in some South American language. The story she tells, and the way she tells it, reminds you somewhat of a basic fairytale archetype (Aarne–Thompson index number 706, to be exact). Apparently there was once a kind girl who lost her hands in some botched ritual to an angry god, and misfortune fell upon her. Kanaya’s old girlfriend, who appears to be the definition of the ‘sexy sorceress village witch’ trope, took pity on her and gave her fortune beyond all belief (and a harem of attractive men, apparently) through a series of entertaining quests. The old girlfriend ended up crafting the girl golden hands, and all lived happily ever after.

And she makes the whole experience quite entertaining, adding bad puns that make you giggle like a schoolgirl here and there and playing off the simple fairy-tale structure by subtly mocking her own storytelling capabilities. By the time she’s finished, you realize you need to be back at the buses in order to leave this dismal place. You give her your number, and she plugs it in on an incredibly old pink Motorola Razr (you ask her why she still uses a device a decade old, and she answers with “I like the design.”) 

She mentions she lives close to your Uni, and is simply dropping by the space center for a few days to continue her apparent quest for ‘an explorer.’ You try to inform her that this location is mainly a tourist trap, but she insists on trying anyways. Gold star for effort, you suppose.

She texts you once you’re on the bus, a simple “This Is Kanaya Communicating Through Text Based Messages Put Me In Your Contacts If It Pleases You”. Which, when you copy her number over, you find actually does please you. You appear to have become rather fond of Kanaya and her odd mannerisms in these past couple hours, and will probably proceed to text her in the future, whether you find her an explorer or not. You like her awkward earnestness, and you like how she matches you in her use of vocabulary, and you especially like that odd accent she has.

Also, if the two of you end up developing some sort of friendship, she might actually tell you what she intends to do with ‘an explorer.’ And perhaps give you the full, truthful definition of what sort of being she actually is. This is a mystery you might, in fact, have some fun solving.


	3. Rose Asimov

Your first semester passes uneventfully, an undocumented monument of your blossoming adulthood. You gain friends, you lose friends, you slowly forget about high school and the friendships you forged out of convenience. However, John and Dave and Jade remain steady companions in your life. You call Dave at least once a week, text John often, and Skype Jade on the rare occasion. 

Kanaya also stays a constant in the equation of your life, to your surprise. You never call her or see her, but you bond over the frequent back and forth of messages through the screen on your phone. You always get a very sick kick out of imagining her rapidly using T9 texting in this day and age, but you like her wit and charm nonetheless. You learn she works as a mid-level manager for some startup marketing company, that she loves to garden and sew, that she adores the color of the lipstick you wear, that she doesn't remember her parents, that she's good with a chainsaw, that she's terrible with modern calenders, that she wishes she could afford designer clothing, that she's from "Central America Perhaps". You ask her what she is at least twenty more times, and the answer is always the same: "I Have No Proof And You Would Not Believe Me". You always try to subtly push her into answering, but she never gives in.

You don't look too hard for 'an explorer,' and your basic, non-major Discovering the Universe course does not lead to any fruitful connections in the field of Astronomy. As your text-based communication with Kanaya slowly progresses into a friendship worthy of Bechdel passing chick flicks, this starts to get your goat a little bit. You always like to pretend you're this incredible hunk of ice queen, but you've got a soft heart sometimes. And it's weighted down with an average amount of guilt at the moment.

You have to talk with your advisor in order to register for your next semester. You suppose this system was put in place so all the stupid freshman sheeple didn't decide to waste away their time with college level home-ec courses or something inane. You think you might ask him how to get connections with an expert who discovers stars. You're not doing it for someone strange anymore, you're doing it for an acquaintance you rather like.

Your advisor is an odd old man, an English professor with skin so pale he looks like he's constantly on the brink of death. His office is like if someone unlocked a time capsule from the 1920's and dumped ugly forest green paint all over everything, and said everything is covered in scratches because he let a bunch of cats loose inside. He's on his typewriter when you walk in, and you sit down with no preamble.

"I'd like advice on how to make connections in the field of astronomy." you say.

He doesn't look up from his typewriter, but his bushy white eyebrow raises in a quizzical fashion. "Why? If I recall correctly, you said something along the lines of 'Don't put me in this science class, I might melt with the obscene amounts of numbers involved, it's like the water to my witch' and frankly, I had to agree with you."

What do you say to that? 'I met some kind of immortal being who is looking for a metaphorical explorer for reasons I can't quite discern, and I feel bad not helping her out'? No. You have to bullshit. You're a writer, you're good at bullshitting. 

“I, er… found a new appreciation for the stars in my class. I want to learn more about the universe, and find it immensely important for the future of the human race to turn our eyes towards the heavens. I believe I want to be there as we thrust ourselves forward into space travel. Therefore, I’d like to talk to and meet with astronomers in the field in order to decide what I would like to do with my career.”

Nailed it. You give yourself a mental pat on the back for that lofty spiel, that was worthy of a concluding statement of some kind of sci-fi psychology paper. Your advisor blinks at you, the folds of his eyelids like sandy tombstones, before responding with:

“If you’re interested, I recommend taking 'Physics 2 with Calculus' and 'History of Astronomy through Newton' which will provide you with both the required humanities and international credits. If you do decide to take Astrophysics and Observational Astronomy in the following year, you will be well qualified for it. And if you decide against it, there is no harm done. Your first two years here should be meant for exploration, after all."

You try not to respond with ‘ugh, math’ and instead respond with, “Hmm, I was more or less looking for someone to talk to about it, no offense to you of course, as opposed jumping in cold-feet to a… mathematics course.”

He catches your disgusted tone, not fooled by your little lie. "Frankly, you cannot talk about big overarching concepts so poetically and then shirk away when there is work to be done. You will, inevitably, make connections in the field once you progress further, but in this early stage, I recommend just taking the damn courses. You’ll know if you like it, once you start staying up every waking hour hyped up on various caffeinated college drinks calculating the area underneath curves, or whatever calculus consists of. I’m not actually sure, I just memorized the college catalog. No computers allowed in this office.”

Your advisor is weird as shit.

You end up signing up for some English courses (Hurrah) and the physics/astronomy courses he recommended (Nay) because you are Rose Lalonde and you can absolutely not back down from a farce you personally built up. You do have some sort of moral code you have to adhere to. 

You talk to Jade about your class selections on Skype, during winter break, and she gets ten thousand times more enthused than you are about your choice of mathematics. 

“Oh my gosh!” she says, clutching her squiddle through poor-quality video. “Rose you are going to have so much fun if you start taking astronomy courses! The stars are literally my favorite things to look at! Besides for like, attractive butts or something.”

“I’m going to do terribly, Jade. This will be the death of me.”

“I seem to remember you not doing too bad in AP Psychics! Or AP Calc!”

“I got a B plus in both. That’s terrible.”

She grins then, big and wide, leaning forward into the camera. “No, no, that’s the wrong idea to have about it! You have to think about how this is like… science fiction. You really like writing those kinds of stories, right? Well, it’s kind of like you’re living it, like you’re one of your characters on the verge of finding something really important or communicating with aliens! It’s okay if you hate all the math stuff but end up really liking the star stuff, because that 3% of the time when you finish your problem perfectly and find out something really really cool about space is the most incredible feeling in the whole wide world! It’s like when you finish a book you’re super proud of, probably. I think you’ll really end up liking astronomy.”

Jade Harley, homebrew stargazer, also does not know about your mysterious friend with the need for ‘an explorer.’ You didn’t have the heart to tell her you truly aren’t interested in this, because she is so, so excited for you. Jade Harley, whose head is filled with mathematics and laws of nature and the physical and everything you don’t like in this world, is excited for you.

That’s probably a bad sign.

Kanaya, on the other hand, is far more excited for your history course. Your text conversation about what courses you selected goes oddly, much like most of your chats with her.

“I signed up for a History of Astronomy course as well. For the credits. Only for the credits. I believe I’ll be learning about who discovered stars and various divination methods, and less about connections in the astronomer field. I am trying though, I promise.”

“Oh Of Course I Do Not Doubt That Thank You So Much Rose”

“I Would Very Much Love To Hear About What You Learn In That Course”

“I Should Know More About The Universe Besides For My Own Nearsighted Viewpoint”

“It Is Not Quite How The World Actually Works I Have Found”

“What viewpoint do you have?”

She takes a long time to text back. She always takes a long time, but this time it’s many minutes before you get the response, “My Names For The Stars Are Different”

You don’t press it.

The physics class ends up going exactly how you expected— difficult and boring. You discover that Jade does, in fact, have a point about the good feeling you get after solving an especially hard problem. You almost feel what might consist of excitement when you get something you know is correct. Ha, just kidding, that’s probably from the collegiate stress-eating.

But the history course, that turns out unlike anything you ever predicted for it. You _love_ it. You absolutely, undeniably love it. You love it more than the non-fiction writing course you’re taking, more than the poetry course. You finish your homework first for the class, you Wikipedia various subjects after lectures, you relish in the running theme of humanity struggling to understand the confusing concepts the universe presents to them with primitive devices and mythologies.

You learn about how ancient ships from China mapped the stars to navigate, you learn about Indian cosmology and the many ruins they left behind, you learn how people divined the position of where they are on Earth from the cycle of the heavens. You learn about the devices they dreamed up, creative things that measured and discovered despite having no knowledge of any mathematics beyond algebra. You learn about myths, how the gods organized the stars to shape the worldview of the culture they originated from, how important religion was to people as they learned and learned.

It’s hard to discern what you love about it so much. Maybe because it feels like you’re a part of something, like you’re part of humanities ‘in-group,’ learning about these thousands and thousands of people who helped expand the global knowledge base so little Rose Lalonde can know and learn.

You text Kanaya everything, and she eats it up. She loves it too, in her own, shift key peppered way, and you bond over it in the flashing screen. She likes hearing about the older stuff in particular, stuff from ancient, ancient worlds, and she asks about it frequently, long after you’ve passed that unit.

“Anything About The Americas Yet”

“Unfortunately, no. This course is rather euro-centric, and I don’t expect we’ll ever get to it. Perhaps when we get to the time period of the colonials?”

“Oh Well Let Me Know”

As for the rest of your spring semester, you have a feeling you’re slowly growing into yourself. You drink, you party, you sit in expensive cafes and write short stories about space pirates and alchemists who defeat dragons made of starry voids with a little bit of clever (and mathematical) thinking. You submit them to easy-pickings undergraduate journals and zines, and when you hear back, that gives you a little buzz of accomplishment.

(Or maybe it’s the stress-eating).

You get a little physical with a girl for an exorbitant amount of time at a party, which is a first, but your over-the-clothing breast fondling skills are apparently far better than your girlfriend-snaring skills because you don’t find a partner to share your freshman year with. Ah well, sophomore year is when you heard things get really smashing and everyone’s acne starts to go away so you don’t lose hope yet.

You pass your last exams with flying colors, even the physics course. A minus. Not bad.

You check your phone after you leave the lecture hall, and to your surprise, Kanaya texted you with a, “Are You Leaving For Texas We Should ‘Hang Out’ As The Cooler Kids Say”.

Your exams are finished, and all you’re waiting for is your carpool to Texas, which departs tomorrow. You’ve got plenty of time to ‘Hang Out’ with Kanaya, and you’re glad to do so. It’s been months since you’ve seen her, since the NASA fuckery, and while you enjoy your text chats it would be nice to view her in person.

You meet her at a nearby ice cream place as the sun sets, where she’s sipping on iced tea in a wicker chair. She’s sleek as ever, dressed in a green blouse tucked into black jeans, shades pearched over some very gaunt cheeks.

She looks… much thinner than before, actually. Something must be missing from her diet. Your inner voice, who at this moment sounds a lot like John Egbert in fake vampire fangs, says, “She vants your blooooooood.” You ignore it. You like her, and you’ve even come to trust her a little over this school year.

You sit across from her at the table, and her face breaks into this absolutely adorable while simultaneously ill-fitting grin, her mirrored sunglasses reflecting your face in the dim orange light.

“Might I ask what your favorite flavor of ice cream is?”

You think about it. “Hmm, I’m a fan of the coffee infused dairy products.”

“You have excellent taste. It will be my treat, then.”

You both get sugar cones with your respective flavors, and sit on the curb as you try to slurp up the melting trails of cream down your hand before heat overtakes their structure completely. You and Kanaya talk about life, about her job, about her coworkers who all “dress terribly” and you wonder why you haven’t met up in-person earlier than this. She’s an absolute charmer, her put-together appearance contrasting with her slightly slouched posture, her proper wording clashing with her sharp and heavy accent.

And as you watch her talk, as you watch her makeup stay perfect despite eating liquid-chocolate ice cream in thick black lipstick, you can’t help but wonder… Is this a date? She did say she had a girlfriend or two in the past…

Well, you wouldn’t mind if it was, although dating an immortal being would have to qualify under pedophilia at some level, somewhere. To be fair, she doesn’t act like it. She acts like you, like she didn’t become more mature through however long she was living, like she’s permanently stuck at, hmm, 22, or however old she’s supposed to look.

Although you are fairly mature for your age. Maybe.

“Did you learn any new constellations in your history course?” she asks, as the first few stars begin to appear in the dim light. “Perhaps ones that weren’t from the Greek civilization, as I have heard about those.”

“Yes, but I didn’t memorize them. I could look them up for you, if you’d like that. Perhaps we could stargaze together? I’m free tonight.”

Holy shit, why did you suggest that? You look down at your melted, brown ice cream to hide the embarrassing sight of your face heating up from Kanaya. Do you _want_ this to be a date? Dating someone who doesn’t trust you enough to tell you their fantasy species is most likely a terrible idea. That is a choice that is worthy of your less-common-sense-filled friends, not Rose Wise Mountaintop Psychologist Lalonde.

“That sounds lovely,” says Kanaya, her tone revealing she did not notice your embarrassment. “I know just the place, as well. I enjoy looking at the stars, it makes me nostalgic.”

“Me too, it reminds me of going on terrible nature excursions with my elementary school girl scout trip. Such nostalgia.”

“Your human sarcasm never fails to entertain, Rose. Tell me more about these so-called ‘nature excursions,’ they sound female-friendly and I support that.”

And you do, until it gets dark. Kanaya has a car, a beat up old lime green Mercedes with black doors, a vehicle that fits her perfectly. When you get in, giggling about something or another, and she starts the car, it occurs to you that you should probably text someone. Just to let them know, just in case you pegged Kanaya completely wrong and she’s going to drain all your blood in the middle of an empty swamp and leave you for the gators.

“Dave,” you text, subtly, while continuing a conversation about coffee beans with Kanaya. “I am going stargazing with a woman who is mildly attractive, and if I don’t make it to Texas tomorrow I am either getting laid or getting my blood drained out of me snuff film-style, so please call the appropriate authorities either way. By which I mean, either the cops or your father to give me a speech on homosexual chastity, whatever works.”

He texts back immediately, but you don’t look at it because you rather like listening to Kanaya. She sure knows an immense amount about caffeinated beverages, and appears to drink coffee like one would taste wine. That’s endearing, while also pretentious. You love it.

She does, in fact, take you thirty minutes out of town to the middle of an empty field. This is where horror stories happen, where she cuts you through the middle with a chainsaw and eats your innards. Spooky.

But you are able view the milky way so good from out here, turn your eyes up to the stars bright and flowing, in a way that you so rarely can see as a girl who moved from city to city in a slew of unstable family life. You’ve come to love the stars, love the way they’re charted, love how they were placed into the sky like sloppy glitter.

You sit on the grass next to Kanaya, short and spiky and dry from the early summer, and take out your phone.

“Alright, it is time to spin the cultural roulette wheel. Which one first?”

“Hmm, somewhere from North America? I like them the best.”

You remember one Native American grouping from your teachings, a Navajo construct called _dilγéhé_. You don’t need your phone from this one, so you set it down in the grass. You glance at Kanaya, beautiful in the dim light, and slowly shift so you’re just barely touching shoulders. Butterflies shoot into your heart like you’re a preteen again, and shit, you’re making this a date, stay calm Rose.

You point up at the sky, your arm brushing against her soft skin, and she follows your gaze.

“Do you see those seven stars right there? The Pleiades? Yes,the Navajo nation calls that group _dilγéhé_ , and they were placed in the sky by the Black God. He put them there as one of the first objects set in the heavens, and therefore it is an important symbol in traditional Navajo foklore.”

Kanaya is unusually quiet. You turn your gaze to her, an easy thing, for right now she looks more beautiful than the many galaxies spinning in the sky. She’s observing the stars with a pensive frown, and it takes a while for her to say, “No, no, that isn’t right at all.”

She points upwards, and you follow her direction. “That, there on the left, is-” she says a name here, something harsh with few vowels, in her own language. “-who forged the many golden bracelets for the queen at the time, so the queen could please the gods. And that, next to her, is-” another name, you’re not sure how you would be able to transliterate that many guttural throat noises. “-who fought off the great serpents in the cave, who saved a whole village from burning into dust.”

“Are those the star names from your culture?”

She smiles over at you, her black lipstick reflecting the starlight. “Yes. We did things differently. It was less constellation-based and more assigning variables on a per-star basis. Which was not the best way to organize things retrospectively, but it did the trick.”

“Interesting.” you say, your eyes glued to her mouth. You want to ask more about this, for this cultural information is incredibly informative and riveting, but the dark color of her lips and imagining said color on your neck has suddenly popped into your head and you can’t stop yourself from saying, “Kanaya, are you doing alright?”

“Yes? Why? What a strange question. Is my lipstick feathering?”

You force yourself to look at the sky again. “Oh, no, no, it is immensely lovely and perfect as per usual. I mean this more in the general sense of things. I hope this isn’t too rude but… You look quite thin.”

You hear her sigh, then look over at her. At her eyes this time, like a normal person. “I… yes. I am low on nourishment.”

John Egbert, clad in vampire fangs, poofs into your mind with an explosion of bad visual effects. You ignore it. “You mean your odd penchant for blood?”

“Like I said, that is not my preferred form of sustenance, but…” she sighs, runs a hand through her silky short pixie cut that you desperately want to ruffle. Her eyes flick to you, and she must read something on your face because she opens those plush lips in her ‘O’ shape. “… Oh, Rose, I did not bring you out here to partake in cannibalistic sins of the flesh, I promise. Let us talk of other things. I am doing just fine, and do not need to force myself upon you again.”

It comes out very, very quiet, and you’re staring at the ground as you say it, but it comes out clear and true nonetheless. 

“I’d like you to.”

You’re too nervous to look at her, your palms growing clammy and _Jesus_ you wish you were drunk for this, and it seems an aeon before her thin fingers brush soft and warm against your bare arm.

“It is… um… easier if we lay down.”

Relief combined with the strength of a thousand heart attacks comes rushing into your chest, and you don’t look at her as she falls against the grass. Fuck it, if you’re going to get your blood sucked out by a woman you rather like, might as well go all the way. “Kanaya… Can I… You know what, no, I’m not even going to ask. Please roll me off if this is too weird.”

Instead of settling down next to her like she probably intended, you gracefully flop yourself over the top of her, your chin nestled against her shoulder, your chest pressed against hers. She’s warm and soft, and she smells like high-quality perfume, the kind of perfume that comes from old money. Thankfully, she rests her arms delicately against your back, pushing upwards on you a little bit so your neck aligns more with her mouth.

You feel her hot breath on your neck and you shiver with a harlequin-novel sort of pleasure and this is certainly a thing that you have wormed your way into. Getting your blood erotically sucked out by a mystery being by the light of the Floridian starscape. What the hell, Lalonde.

“I will not take too much,” she whispers, and you feel her lips against your sensitive skin and you clutch at her arms. “Thank you, Rose.”

You feel her sharp teeth gently press against your vein, and you whimper as though to represent a vicious metaphor for sexual intimacy, and she bites into you.

It is a very shallow bite, and it does not hurt as bad as you thought it would. It’s much like getting your ears pierced— just a sudden stabbing pain, then nothing but the slow throb of sensation. Her lips go tight against your skin, and you feel a sudden pressure getting relieved in a flow of blood.

“Oh,” you moan, despite your best intentions. “Oh, Kanaya…”

It feels like you are slowly getting high (you once accidentally ate a pot brownie at a seedier party). Everything gets light and dreamy, gently spinning, and the little physical things come through your senses— her hand grasping your shoulder blade, her lips soft and slick against your neck, her leg gently pressing between your thighs, her breasts against yours.

It lasts much shorter than you wanted it to, her mouth leaving your neck with a short little lick that makes you tingle, and she’s squirming around under you to grab a bandaid from her pocket. You feel woozy and dreamy and and filled with butterflies and your head is spinning and before you know it, your lips are pressed over hers.

You taste your own blood on her and you are aware of the fact you might possibly regret this in mere minutes.

Fortunately, you don’t have to find out, because you faint for the second time in your life in the middle of the weirdest kiss of your life.

You wake up in her car, in the parking lot of what appears to be a gas station which is currently duplicated in your foggy vision, where Kanaya is attempting to slap you with a bottle of orange juice and a Chewy bar. 

“Rose, my dear, you have an objectively terrible constitution. Eat these things or I might possibly bite my manicure off with how much I am worrying. I am worrying a lot, if you have to ask.”

You do so as she drives you to your dorm, slowly, attempting not to look like a complete loser and spill the whole bottle/granola package over yourself. You manage to keep it steady, even as she walks you to your room.

Your roommate is there, which makes things awkward. Kanaya gives you an even more accented than usual “Goodbye” before swiftly absconding, and you are far too tired to even think about anything but passing out face down on your bed.

When you look at Dave’s text the next morning, it says “why not both”.

You don’t bring up the kiss in your conversations with Kanaya for the whole summer. You can’t decide if it’s because she thinks you don’t remember it or if you’re both so awkward you are forced to avoid it out of the combined flightiness of your personalities. You have a sinking feeling it’s the latter.

You spend the months at Dave’s father’s apartment, whom he insists on calling “Bro” for some ungodly reason. The summer is dry, awful, and filled with texts to Kanaya and Wikipedia binges. You go to the library a few times, digging up books about astronomy and astrology, about how cultures viewed the stars and about all the odd devices and temples they dreamed up to do so. Your creative writing slows down a bit as you replace your word output with word input.

Jade comes to visit a few times, mostly for Dave, but you spend the occasional Saturday with her getting curry and chatting about nothing in particular. Astronomy inevitably works its way into your conversations here and there, and while Jade loves hearing about the mathematical side of it, she also greatly enjoys your observations on the nature of stargazing.

“See Rose, I told you!” she says, chewing on a chickpea. “I knew you’d like astronomy!”

That comes as a surprise to you. “Are you confused? I enjoy the history aspect, not the actual science of it.”

“No, that’s not right at all. The way you talk about it, Rose… It’s not like you’re detached from the actual process of star hunting and discovering the universe, you like the people part of it! The human part. You said to me that you like feeling like you’re part of the ‘human knowledge machine,’ that you like knowing things nobody else does so you can share them and make the world better. Why not be a part of it?”

You dip your naan into your curry, and change the subject.

You lay that night on top of Dave’s apartment, Texas heat enveloped in the concrete against your back, staring up at the maximum of six stars visible through the Austin smog (all of which you can name), and wonder. 

You think of reaching up, brushing the milky way with your fingertips, scattering yourself across bending light and form and things invisible to the naked eye, and you think it all quite romantic. That you can observe with your telescope, and not see what's physically there, that there's a gateway of mathematics and radio waves and ultraviolet and sheer distance standing in between common sense and the vast expanse of the universe and truth itself. You like the truth. You like dancing around it as much as you like defining it, you like using it for your own schemes and imagination and giving it to others when you've shaped it to your will.

It's why you like writing, you suppose. Because you can put your imagination in neat, truth-bombed little packages and distribute it to your friends and unknowns and get 'sick street cred,' as Dave would say. But what value can you give the universe with your satire and your fantasy and your science fiction? Oh yes, you can sway political campaigns, popular opinion, and inspire future inventors, but that's simply being an anonymous cog in the great machine of humanity. Your best case scenario is that you write a scathing parody which is remembered for a few centuries and perhaps induces a great change or two, then is promptly forgotten due to the onslaught of technology and the march of time.

You're Rose Lalonde. You want to be eternal. You want to be taught in history courses. You want to engrave your name in something solid so everyone will know you until the heat death of the universe. You want to be power and light and reach into the future and grab its truth with your strong fingers. You want to stand on the shoulders of giants and knowledge and define the stars so that giants may stand on the shoulders of you, so you may pave the way for explorers and solve primal mysteries with a swipe of your calculator. You want to discover the meaning of the universe, you want to discern meaning from truth, and the only truth there is can be represented in numbers and fractions and tiny particles of light written in letters.

You want to look up at the stars, and imagine that you're there, and know that what your imagination dreams up is the undeniable truth, proved by your theorems and your brilliant mind.

And alone on the rooftop, with a tear leaking sideways from your eye in the way it occasionally does when you wake up in the morning, you say to yourself, "I must know."

… You think you might try a double major.


	4. I See You Shine In Your Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was _really_ hard to research. I'd be curious to know how accurate I got things, so let me know if you've been through an astronomy program somewhere and noticed anything off!

You start first semester sophomore year with Astrophysics right off the bat. It’s an okay class, just another piece of mediocre mathematics drawl on the heap of this double major you’ve chosen for yourself, and you know you’ll perform slightly above average at it. Like most things you do.

The real meat and potatoes of the _Rose Lalonde: Star Girl_ experience begin with the Observation Techniques class. You don’t think it would be half as entertaining without your professor, a witty woman, who turns charts and computer data into puns and jokes and sheer imagination. You’re determined to always see it like that, never fall into your cynicism with this field, to try to be proud of the picture you took of Andromeda in low-quality black and white even though everyone else in your class did the same thing.

Kanaya is impressed with you when she comes to visit, two weeks into school and in person. She visits on a Saturday, and you spend the whole day together, getting lunch, ironically shopping for kitchy old-woman things, getting dinner, and finally movies on the common room couch. She says things to you like, “That is your mathematics homework? Oh my, I thought I was fluent in English. I have never been more wrong in my life.” and “Astronomy has gotten far more computerized than when I specialized in it. It must be challenging.” And then very quietly, when she thinks you’ve fallen asleep on the edge of the couch after absolutely non-ironically watching Interview with the Vampire, “you are so brilliant, so smart, you shine just like my stars.”

You still don’t talk about that kiss. You don’t even hit on her, besides for the most subtle of elbow touches to get your heart throbbing and your chest tight. Damn you and your flighty sensibilities.

You frequently go to the observatory on Rosemary Hill (a cute name, you wonder why you’re so fond of it), spending clear and hot evenings gazing up at the sky through many mirrors and lenses. There’s an extended stay one week, which you try your hardest to enjoy, documenting waves and curves of pure light. You always liked the light, just how you’ve always been a fan of the dark in your angst-ridden teenage days, and you feel almost at home staying in the short-term dorms and waiting for the stars to peek out.

It’s not great, but you try to keep your Lalonde-brand feelings ‘chipper’ and ‘Egbert-like.’ You attempt to keep your sights on that dream you had, that night on Dave’s apartment’s roof, but it gets harder with each passing week as you go through boring practice problem after boring practice problem. The highlight of your school week switches to the essay writing class, and that course is taught by a ninety year old man who thinks overheads are new technology. At the end of your first month, you already feel So Done with school.

Much of the actual work in the following months turns out to be less “grand observations of the universe and the many galaxies within it” and more “sweeping through piles of garbage computer data.” John was the only person you knew who could stand this sort of stuff, and he cannot help you anymore because he foolishly chose to major in music instead of something lucrative.

Not like you can talk. English and Astronomy? Please.

You’re forced to contact your mom for help, off on her infinite vacation to who knows where, who will write drunken programs in C++ for you when all you want is a little help with a line or two in Matlab. They have function names like hi_sweetie and cutie_patoot and classes like MissU and KissesXOXO and are completely incomprehensible but somehow accomplish what you need. You make a mental note to send her a slightly less-ironic mothers day gift this year.

As the months drag on, you find yourself falling back into your bitter periods of “I hate this, ugh, math, why am I doing this peasant pleb work” and dropping the Astronomy major seems more and more attractive as the novelty of your dream begins to wear off. Your advisor was right: you can’t handle the dirty work.

When it comes time for spring semester registration, the only Astronomy course you sign up for is the modern history class. The others are all general education credits.

You’re almost afraid to tell Kanaya this, that you gave up on attempting to get connections in Astronomy, that you gave up on the dream for yourself you so excitedly explained to her a few months ago. But she understands, holds your hand on top of the plastic table you’re sipping iced tea on, and just says, “Do what your heart wants, Rose. You do not have to do anything you don’t want to do for me.”

You tell her that was a terribly cliche line. She just laughs. Her laugh is beautiful, makes your heart flutter all the stronger every time she does it, and you can’t even work up the nerve to lace her fingers with yours.

You wonder if she even likes you like that. ‘Like-like’s you. You’re not sure if you’re brave enough to find out. 

You keep going on lunch dates with her though, almost every weekend, and you can see her getting thinner and you’re tempted to suggest repeating the blood drinking ritual again. But you’re still scared, scared of that kiss, because you’re a wimpy little girl who’s tragically failing at being the elegant grownup you always wanted to become.

You’re starting to feel lost and confused in your life, like you feel you should know what you want, feel like you should be confident in your English major, but you haven’t the slightest idea what you’re supposed to be doing. English doesn’t feel important enough, not this huge and great thing you thought procuring a degree would be like, but it comforts you to know that all your friends feel like that too.

All but John, anyway. John’s in a good place with a _fucking Church Music and Organ Performance_ major. Honestly, what? You can’t say you’re not mind-bogglingly jealous. Maybe you should become some crazy Catholic gospel music player in a nun habit and- oh God no, that’s a terrible joke, you can’t even finish that thought. It’s a little disconcerting to know that one of your dear friends found his calling immediately and stuck with it wholeheartedly. And it’s playing an objectively terrible instrument. God.

But one day in December, just before exams, things change.

You’re doing a final, huge practice problem for your observation class, where you take a CCD image and map various stars and light wavelengths and other such droll shit to it, and you’re halfway down your picture when you can’t find a star in the catalog your professor gave you.

You triple check it, redo the coordinates around the missing star, call Kanaya in a fury to complain to her. You’re Rose Lalonde. You do _not_ make academic mistakes. It must be an error in the image, and you’ve got to fix it.

You go to your professor about it, point at the star you can’t find, and say, “My image must have had extra noise on it. I’d like to retake it for fear of passing this class with a B instead of the A I deserve.”

She blinks at it a few times. “No, no, Rose, I watched the whole process, you did it perfectly. Here, let me see.”

You hand it to her, and she double checks the calculations you’ve quadruple checked by now, then she hands it back to you and gives you a big grin. “Everything’s correct, and it looks like you’ve captured a variable star! You should report it to AAVSO, you might get credited with a new star discovery.”

A new star discovery.

A new star discovery that will get put in a catalog. That everyone will use— astronomers, astronauts, everyone.

Your heart begins to pound. 

Pounds in the way when you ride roller coasters, when you imagine Kanaya shaving her legs in the bathtub during a particularly uninspired fantasy, when you’re doing something _exciting_. You haven’t felt this way about academia since you were the big fish in a small pond in High School. “What? Really?” you say, a bit too energetically.

“Yes, but I’ve got to warn you, it’s not a huge deal. People discover variable stars fairly frequently, but that doesn’t make it any less important. You should definitely collect more data and submit it. I’ll vouch for you if everything looks right.”

You might be overly excited and hyped up on a sudden and unexpected rush of endorphins, but that doesn’t stop you from being the conniving woman you are. “Do I get extra credit for this?”

“Ten percent.”

“Sold.”

You gather what you need on the weekend, head to Rosemary Hill to doublecheck various readings at midnight on a Saturday, skipping out on the party you wanted to attend to go be the bad kind of nerd who stays up late to dig through numbers.

Kanaya brings you hot chocolate spiked with fireball whiskey. You think you might come to love this woman, if anything ever happens between the two of you. Which it wont, you utter pansy, you.

You sip it outside when you’re done with your work, on the spiky dry grass, looking up at the night sky just beginning to fade into a light pink-purple. She didn’t bring nearly enough to get you drunk, but you enjoy the slight buzz it gives you anyways.

“Does this mean I’m an explorer now?” you ask her, focusing on the pretty color at the horizon. It reminds you of that squiddle shirt you used to wear. “Discovering stars, drinking whiskey, plundering the vestiges of adulthood…”

“I cannot think of anything more exploratory than those items you just listed,” she says, taking another drink. She’s catching onto your sarcasm, which you like. “But, not quite yet, it’s got to be confirmed, you need proof and you need to show me it.”

“Will you tell me what sort of being you are when I have proof?”

“Yes. Assuredly. Because your proof gives me my proof, in a proof ouroboros.”

You ‘pfft’ at that comparison, too tipsy to fight back with some stinging comeback mocking her word choice. Kanaya laughs again, then says, “Losing your edge, I see. Too many dark nights on Rosemary hill?”

“So many. All of the nights.” Another sip of your hot chocolate, it’s getting colder. “No, the only thing that’s appeared to have happened is that I’ve become a huge nerd. I’ve lost every pretentious lip curl and sneer I can possibly lord over the science students, sigh. At least _you’ll_ be getting something out of my little foray into astronomy. Whatever it might be.”

“And you’ll be getting something too.”

You tear your eyes away from the purple on the horizon, turn your head towards Kanaya, her face a picture of soft lighting and perfect skin. “What would that be?”

“A sense of discovery. I heard it is quite addicting.”

Well, your family is certainly prone to addiction.

It takes all of January for your star to get approved and put in the variable catalog. Your professor was right. There’s no pomp and circumstance, no confetti, just a twenty-two digit jumbled name for your variable star and the coordinates where it’s located. You’re notified of it by email one night when you’re reading in bed. 

You bring the database up on your phone and stare at your star for half an hour, reading over the data you submitted again and again. And the year and your name at the bottom, permanently associated with this ineffable ball of light.

_Lalonde R. et al, astro-ph._

You helped map the stars.

You’ll be there forever and ever and ever. And maybe one day your descendants will travel there and look out the window of their campy sci-fi spaceship and say in the shimmering yellow light, “That’s _Rose’s_ star. Hot fucking damn.” 

Pride bursts up from your ribcage, warm and strong and more than you can handle, and you thank the Lord your roommate is dead asleep because you’re suddenly weeping. You bite your lip, staying silent, your shoulders heaving against the springs on the mattress, tears of pride dripping down your cheeks at an alarming rate. You hold your screen in front of your face until your eyes are so blurry it’s impossible to see anymore, and you fall asleep with your phone on your chest feeling more whole than you have since you were a child.

Jade said something to you, repeated it a million times because she knew you weren’t getting it, something that you dismissed every time because you and her are on completely different wavelengths when it comes to academia. She said, “97% of the time you’re going to hate what you’re doing. Really! You’ll struggle and kick and feel terrible. But that other 3% of the time, when you accomplish something, _that’s_ what makes everything worth it. You remember why you started doing it in the first place, why this makes you happy. It’s incredible.”

You don’t feel that way about writing. The whole journey is the fun part when you make your novels and stories, but there’s no high at the end. No payoff, just a little smart feeling of success like, “yes, good job, self, now onto the next idea.” You can’t say you ever felt like you have when you discovered this little variable star. It’s good. So, so good. Like you’re filled with light and butterflies and a much needed amount of some self-fucking-confidence.

When you think about what it might be like when you're discovering novas, planets, entire _galaxies_...

Maybe astronomy turned out to be the right choice after all.


	5. Floridian Chain Saw Massacre

You only work up the courage to tell Kanaya a week later, because you’re not sure you have the nerve to reveal the fact you have proof you’re “an explorer” in a semi-public place. You don’t want anyone walking in on the embarrassing fantastical revelation Kanaya might produce. If there’s one thing you learned in college so far, it’s that dormitories are a terrible place to avoid unexpected walk-ins.

You ask to visit her apartment on the first weekend in February, and she complies with your request. She even picks you up in her odd vehicle and drives you to her bedchambers… Er, you mean, living space. You spend the whole ride chatting about the monomyth style of narrative— You’re a huge proponent of straying away from the typical ‘hero’s journey’ tale, while Kanaya enjoys the classic stereotypes of a protagonist’s growth. When you arrive at Kanaya’s building, you’re a little surprised at how boring the outside of it looks.

But her own apartment is furnished impeccably, with the loving eye that only a designer with a low budget can produce. Her living room consists of a cozy red corduroy couch, placed a perfect distance away from a flat-screen television. Two D.I.Y. black tables holding potted plants grace the sides of either couch arm. She’s got a few living indoor flora placed in the corners of the room, minus the right side where a breakfast bar peeks into a spotless kitchen. There are frames holding black and white pictures of people you’ll likely never meet hanging on the walls in various feng shui appropriate places. The whole experience is very much Kanaya-like.

You make your home on the couch as Kanaya brings the two of you ice water. You pull up the database with your variable star on your phone. Your heart is pounding, for some odd reason. You suppose you’re afraid nothing will happen when you show her, that this was all some farce she had planned to… get you into her home and cut you in half with a chainsaw, perhaps. Although that would be a droll ending to your life and you would be immensely disappointed if a stereotypical lesbian horror murder turned out to be the cause of your untimely death. 

She sets a glass on your respective end table, then sits an awkward level of close to you on the couch. When there are three cushions, Kanaya, you’re supposed to not plant your cute tush on the middle one. You consider teasing her on it, but decide what you originally came here for is more important.

“So,” you wave your phone at her, flipped backwards so she can’t see the screen. “In this digital device, I have proof that I am, indeed, an explorer, and have discovered something.”

Kanaya makes a reach for your phone, but you pull it out of the way. “Tut tut, Kanaya. This star is not just an image I can show you out of the blue, not simply something I can present to the-” you stop to give a mocking shudder. “- _right brained_ peasants. Not without ruining the complex math with simplistic explanations.”

Kanaya’s picked up on your teasing by now, and she gives a coy, immensely attractive smile. How is it even possible for her lips to be that magnetic? They’re similar to a succulent black hole, waiting to pull you in, to _ravish_ you, to- “Well then, unleash upon me your metaphors, and I will prepare my right-headsphere to be overloaded with mathematics and other similar disciplines.”

You hold your phone so both of you are able to see the screen, and Kanaya presses her shoulder gently against yours to gaze down upon the web page. She’s warm, lovely, and… shaking. Just barely, like she’s buzzing with an unseen electric current. “Alright, here it is,” you say, tapping your thumb on the title of the catalog. Your heart is pounding, and you foolishly wonder if she can feel it. “That’s the name of my star, and those are the coordinates where it is located in the universe. How much would you like me to explain to you? What qualifies as ‘exploration?’ Some of it is extremely boring information for laymen.”

You flick your eyes to Kanaya, who is much closer than you realized. She is clearly attempting to keep her breaths even, fabric rubbing flush against your arm. She’s biting her lip, concentrating intensely on your phone. “I need… two things from you, but only if you are willing. Yes, I do need a full explanation of everything located on this Internet address, in a way I might be able to visualize. And I also need… your reasoning behind _why_ you decided to discover this star in the first place.”

Why would she need a motive, of all things? “Is there a correct answer for that latter part?”

Kanaya makes eye contact with you, apparently notices how close you are, and blushes furiously. Ha, and you thought you were the juvenile one. Nonetheless, it still makes your heart flutter like you were a silly crushing schoolgirl. “I… yes, there is a correct answer. But I cannot influence you.”

You’re awkwardly silent for a while, inwardly cursing your inability to perform the classic yawn-and-stretch move, until Kanaya says, “Um, please begin.”

And you do. You jump straight into an explanation of what’s plastered on the screen, attempting to help Kanaya visualize where your star exists in space, how far away it is, the level of brightness, and other such nonsense. Thankfully, this is an easy thing to accomplish due to your inherent author nature, and you get Kanaya on board quicker than expected.

But the second part, the _why_ you began this whole astronomical debacle… That will be difficult.

You take a deep breath, concentrate hard on the television, then note the black reflection of you two sitting awkwardly close to each other while simultaneously staring at said TV, and concentrate on the floor instead. What are you supposed to spin up? What kind of tale are you supposed to tell her? Well, you’ll start with what you’ve already regaled to her, which seems the easiest option.

“I stuck with this astronomy course track for myself, in all honesty, because I want to etch my name amongst immortals and make a contribution to a science that will remain forever and ever. As for how that will work in the long run, I’m not entirely sure, but discovering that star apparently triggered some addiction in me, and I don’t expect to stop.”

That’s not the _why_. Not at all why you started. It’s why you kept going, but not the spark of your journey. Kanaya doesn’t say anything, so it must not have been the answer she was looking for. You stare hard at the floor, not daring to look up. You’re embarrassed to tell the truth, embarrassed that…

No, Rose. Buck up. You can do this.

“No, that’s not… Not at all why I began this journey, this discovery. I mean, Kanaya…” You jerk up, yank your head to face Kanaya, and she’s right there and her eyes are wide and gorgeous and her skin is etched in unique and glorious patterns and that forces the truth right out of you. “… I did it for you.”

Kanaya’s pupils decrease to the size of pinpoints. She breathes in, once, and says, “There it is.”

She starts to shine.

Your first thought is, “Oh no, the Twilight vampires were real. I can’t believe it. Better swoon as she takes me into her cold, dead, arms once yet again.”

You, in actuality, do nothing quite as romantic. 

You start to scream.

Kanaya isn’t just glowing, isn’t just burning blazing white through the lighter patches of her vitiligo, she’s also beginning to grow. She fills out immediately, her height balanced out with taught muscle, healthy cheeks, and proportions worthy of master Renaissance sculptors hired by the Vatican. The sheer impossibility of it all is terrifying, ignoring the fancy light show which is currently emanating from her skin.

Her eyes burn jade green with smoky power. The world goes midnight around her face. Two grand, orange horns spiral upwards from the crown of her head, knitting themselves together in gnarled and hooked shapes. She smiles, black lips outlined harsh against white.

You’re terrified. You’re also, oddly, aroused. Oh, fuck, you _are_ the blond lesbian bimbo in a horror movie. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

You scramble behind you, fling your arms wildly, the plant on the endtable going tumbling to the ground in a shatter. You stupidly and instinctively curl your back against the arm of the couch in an attempt to get away, get away from whatever horror is unleashed in front of you. You dabbled in dark stories of creatures unknown when you where younger, and you will not, will _not_ , be the tragic heroine in a Lovecraft-turned-real story.

Kanaya has different thoughts, apparently, and follows your body in its fall against the couch, and she whispers with a voice that feels like the echo took millions of light years to reach your ears, “Oh, Rose, Rose, it’s been so long, so so long!”

And then she kisses you, and your world expands beyond reason.

Universes align and planets collide and the fear gets sucked out of you into the event horizon. Literally. Wait, yes, you are actually, literally, seeing these things under your closed eyelids. Stars fly past your head, novas pulse through your senses in bright, fake, NASA-y colors, zoom past your closed eyes like a high-budget homage to _Space Odyssey: 2001_. Your soul gets yanked through clusters of asteroids and gaseous planets into suns and stars and light, and it’s mind-blowing.

It is an excellent thing you don’t get motion sickness, otherwise you would be vomiting up a storm.

And there with you, on this very sudden and not unwanted interstellar journey, is Kanaya. You feel her against you, still feel her grounding you, pressing her body on top of yours, tracing up your back, soft kisses as you give up all control and probably turn your physical non-space faring self into a whimpering packet of erotic heat.

This is the best kiss of your _life_. It is with no lack of enthusiasm that your mind decides to repeat the two deep thoughts over and over: “Holy shit, space!” and “Holy shit, Kanaya!”

You’re not sure how long it lasts, this impossibly fast road trip through the entirety of the milky way, but Kanaya is the one to pull away. Reality is slow to come back, and her foggy voice cuts through the darkness in the barest whisper. “Oh, I should turn this off. That is how I got into this mess in the first place.”

The harsh bright of a Floridian apartment stings your eyes, and you blink them open to find Kanaya backing off from you. You reluctantly let her slip away from her grasp, let her sit up in her normal outfit with her normal skin and normal eyes, with a normal and gargantuan blush spanning her cheeks.

She looks… a bit healthier. Not as on the verge of starvation. Well, you certainly did _something_ , but you’re not exactly sure what that something is.

Besides getting you quite worked up under the belt.

It is unbelievable how much you are throbbing with want for her. Who knew that mysterious feminine eldritch monsters would turn you on that much? Wait, you did know that, actually. Although it would help if she had tentacles instead of orange horns.

“Okay,” you pant, attempting to sit up straight. “Okay, I demand you tell me, tell me what that was. That was… incredible, fantastic, amazing-”

“I am sorry for kissing you when you were vulnerable!” she blurts out, her hands clenched in the fabric of her slacks. “I did not mean to take advantage-”

“When I used all those complementary adjectives, it wasn’t just about space, Kanaya!” you say, your lips tugging up into a smile.

“I… oh… Oh? You’re okay with…”

“Yes, please, I am, I so am-” Your heart is pounding through your ears, butterflies and excitement and joy and heat and a little fear all smashing into one fantastic and overwhelming emotion. “-and I would love to continue the festivities soon and discuss them thoroughly, but I have a great need for you- Excuse me, I mean, I have a great need to know what you are, and what you just did to me.”

You manage to get yourself up into a proper sitting position against the end of the couch. Kanaya has her legs crossed much further away from you, not touching you, not even looking at you. You allow yourself a few deep breaths to try and grasp at something resembling calm, and the throbbing of your bloodstream slowly decreases.

After at least thirty seconds, Kanaya looks up at you, and her shoulders straighten with a prim summoned confidence.

“You just payed me tribute in my favored form, and I received power from it. Power which I just made use of. You see,” She blinks once, and tilts her head towards you. 

“I am a god.”

‘So hurry up with my damn massage,’ says your inner voice, who at this moment sounds a lot like Dave Strider making a pop culture reference while terrified and mumbling. 

A god? If this is true, then the real world effects of this are world-shattering at the least. “God of… what? What religion?”

“I am the god of the new spaces, the night, and the rising and setting sun.” she says. “Which is essentially a roundabout way of saying I am very good at managing heroism arcs. And I do not recall where my point of origin is, southern Central America somewhere. It’s been a… a long time since I was relevant.”

“How long?”

“Millennia.”

Your eyes narrow into thin coin slots. You might be frightened, excited, and unbelievably turned on, but that won’t stop the Lalonde copyrighted judgment train from departing the station. “Millennia. Really.”

“Yes, I have existed for tens of thousands of years,” she says, as if she needed to clarify. “Although I took frequent naps, which lasted centuries, so my mental age is much younger. I am a very deep sleeper.”

Hmm.

If this is real, which it can’t be since the real world effects of a certain pagan religion being 100% true might possibly implode physics itself, you have apparently seduced some ancient, Mesoamerican lifeform through sheer willpower and charm. You believe this calls for the phrase: Holy shit. 

She notices your hesitation, and her closed-lipped smile grows only bigger. “I knew you would not believe me, so I waited to tell you this until I had proof. Which, thankfully, you delivered.”

You want to ask her a thousand questions, delve into her history, prod and poke her until she gives more vocal evidence. But your physical urges are winning out over your mind, the shared blush between you and her winning out over more rational thought. You get up on your knees, slowly, and edge over to her. The look on her face when you do your seductive little Rose Lalonde crawl is true art. 

“I’m still not…” you bite your lip, hooking your fingers around the back of her neck, and, god- gods, she’s _beautiful_. Divine or not, lying to you or not, you want to run your hands through her hair and do unspeakable things to her. You want to cry out her name in sin, take her name in vain. “I’m still not sure if I believe you, but you can explain it to me later when… Er… Right now, I’d like to gather more… proof… for analysis.”

You’re so smooth. Jesus.

Kanaya flashes what is quite possibly the most shaky smile you have ever seen. She is clearly stunned by your incredible pickup line prowess. “Oh, so, it’s… it is okay? I want this, but I do not want to pressure you, do you want…”

“Kanaya, darling,” you pull her up to your face by the collar, and she’s choking back nervous laughter as you lick your lips. “Let me _worship_ you.”

You almost laugh at your own joke because you’re a complete idiot, and the only thing that stops you is Kanaya taking the line with utter seriousness. She peeps, actually peeps, and her face flushes dark. You pull her in just a little further and your lips press to hers in a sweet, holy cacophony of eroticism.

She settles in immediately, her hands trailing up your ribs, thumb brushing along under the curve of your breast, making your heart flutter and blood pump in oh-so-many places. The universe comes back into full swing, whirring around your head, you and Kanaya at the very heart of the many galaxies. Stars are born and burst inside you, and you’re not sure if that’s entirely from the special effects or from the emotional static that’s shooting up your limbs.

She’s rubbing you over your bra now, and you’re feeling sensitive and warm and really fucking high so now is probably a good time to come clean that you’re an untouched unicorn before you get a case of the vapors.

“Kanaya,” you say, breaking away from the kiss and wincing at the cold burst of reality rushing over you. She blinks at you, surprised.

Wait, you didn’t think this through. What do you say? 'I've never had sex before'? 'I am a twenty year old who has never gone further than heavy petting'? 'I once touched two sets of boobs and am looking forward to adding yours as a third on my list of breasts fondled'?

“I've never...” you say. “... had lesbian sex in space before.”

“Oh,” she says, legitimately surprised. “Well, that is the only place I have ever had sex, and I would highly recommend it. Also this couch is uncomfortable and I would appreciate it if you were willing to allow me to transport you to somewhere quite nice.”

“Wait, no, I’m sorry, that wasn’t what I meant to say. Ha ha, nerves.” You take a deep breath, attempt to gather your senses. “I meant, I’ve never made love to anyone before. If- _when_ we go further, I, well, this will be my first time.”

Kanaya’s face melts into a sweet smile, along with your heart. “Oh, that is quite alright. I have not taken many lovers and am also relatively inexperienced, but I will go slow and communicate nonetheless.”

She bites her lip then, her gorgeous thick lips which are soon going to smear black all over you, and there’s a hitch in her breath as her eyes search up and down your body. “You are… oh, I am remarkably bad at this, but… you are so beautiful, Rose. Not that I want to, hmm, _you-know-what_ just because you are beautiful, but that is definitively a part of it. I would like to… um… I would greatly enjoy it if you allowed me to pleasure you.”

You can’t help the very undignified giggle that rises out of your throat, so you attempt to smother it by kissing Kanaya as hard and as passionately as you can. Worthy of film noir passion, worthy of the conclusion of a musical, worthy of only the most romantic of harlequin novels. It’s that good.

And your knees drop off the couch, shooting stars fly past your head, and the world evolves into sparkles and galaxies and everything good and right. You pull her shirt off, she slips her hand under your skirt, and you turn into a hormonal moaning mess as Kanaya quite literally rocks your world.

Not a bad way to lose your virginity, you have to say.


	6. Life is Funny That Way

You bask against her in the naked afterglow, holding her tight to you, enjoying how _luscious_ everything feels. You’re so warm in her arms, so content with your nose almost pressing against hers, so happy with your eyes locking together like, hmm, insert romantic and flowery metaphor here. You just really like how green they are.

All seems right with the universe, except for one thing.

“Kanaya?”

“Yes?”

“Why in the world do you have black sheets?” You pluck it off your hip, lean away from her to a rational speaking distance, and wave it back and forth for emphasis. “That seems like a terrible idea when you engage in strenuous lovemaking activities in bed.”

She purses her lips, smeared black all over in the most attractive smudge known to mankind, and says, “Oh, bluh. Admittedly, I did not think of that. I suppose I will have to do laundry sooner than expected.”

You laugh at her sudden blush, then kiss it away with a few well-placed pecks to the cheek. “I see you rarely have illicit bedfellows, then.”

“Not for a long time, I am a very picky being when it comes to romantic encounters.”

You waggle your eyebrows. “I suppose there’s no nubile temple girls to choose from anymore, hmm?”

“Oh, no, um, I never did that. I never engaged in carnal acts with my worshipers.”

“Until now.” you say, grinning. The blush returns with a fury and a whimper. You love, love, _love_ working that beautiful shade of pink out of her. 

You adjust, slipping your arm out from under Kanaya’s waist and propping yourself up with it against the black pillow. An appropriate pose, meant for intimate conversation. “And now that we’ve got all our carnal acts accounted for, you are going to tell me _everything_.”

“Everything? That is a great many things.”

“Don’t worry, beautiful, I’ll prompt you.” She nods, trying and failing to hide a smile spawned by your little pet name. “Let’s start with the so-called ‘facts.’ You informed me that you are some sort of deity originating from an ancient and unknown religion in South America. Your domain falls under, and I quote, ‘the new spaces, the night, and the rising and setting sun,’ which seem rather unrelated to me-”

“Excuse you, they are very much related!”

“-but I digress. Anyway, the important bit is that discovering a star or similar unknown object and claiming it as ‘discovered’ in your name gives you power. Or keeps you alive, I’m not sure which.”

She smiles earnestly. “It is both.”

“Ah, so I should be thankful you do not demand tribute of human sacrifice, then.” 

Which is, honestly, is what you would expect when imagining the act of appeasing ancient pagan gods. Having a set of explorers which pay their tithe to their god by expanding an empire, well, that’s ingenious. You continue, voicing your thoughts out loud. “’Discovery’ is an interesting way of proving faith. I assume this used to apply moreso to land expansion and conquest, then? When the world was new and unknown for your civilization.”

“Yes, that is how I sustained myself at the height of things. I do not mean to brag but…” She lowers her eyes, in a fake-humble way. “I was fairly popular.”

You chuckle, brush some of her hair back behind her ear. “With your beauty? I can believe that.”

That blush again. Christ, it’s fun to fuck with her. 

You’re not sure if it’s the genuineness of how she presents herself or the post-orgasm feminine humors at work, but you believe in her godhood wholeheartedly. It makes sense: the odd accent, the stories she tells, her relationship with technology, how she carries herself so straight-edge like she’s used to people looking up to her. It makes sense that she is a god of new lands past her prime, out of power in a world that was fully explored long ago.

“Tell me your place in myth,” you say. “What role did you play?”

She thinks about this, chewing on her lip and rolling her eyes up in recollection. “Well, I managed a temple filled with heroes. Those who worshiped me were explorers and scholars and brilliant darlings whom I loved and made comfortable in my afterlife. I used to talk to them frequently, but they have not called home in centuries. I suppose they are busy with things.”

That last part _deeply_ confuses you. Afterlife? Called home? It also happens to shake your staunchly atheist worldview an uncomfortable amount. You neglect to ask about it, since Kanaya’s on a roll and you don’t want to interrupt.

“I was known for two things in our mythos. The first: I put the stars in the sky after the creator god —and this is a direct quote from him— ‘shouted us fucks into existence.’”

“And how does one put stars in the sky?”

“Oh, it’s rather easy, all you need is something shiny and a good throw.”

“I’m… sure there’s more to it than that,” You’re silent for a bit, tempted to bring your atheist views into the discussion. Would that upset her? Well, you have to know. 

“Kanaya… You can’t have done that. We know, _I_ know, that the stars weren’t made in some lofty creation story. The stars have been hanging in the heavens for ages and ages, older than humanity and far older than you say you are. And are definitely farther away than you can throw.”

She turns her face away from you, her expression suddenly solemn, staring up at her popcorn ceiling. “I’m aware of this. Some of the things we did, what I remember doing, clashes with modern science quite drastically! I am inclined to trust centuries worth of knowledge over my own past, but it still confuses me. I used to bring the dawn and the dusk, and I very clearly remember _having_ to do that, or it would not happen. But when I stopped… Nothing changed. The world moved on without me.”

She sighs, slowly. “Oh, Rose, you would have loved to set the sun with me. You remember my very fashionable and apparently vampiric cloak? I would spread it out and drag the night across the sky, and in the morning, I would uncover it. I flew right up close to the stars, my arms long and brushing the particles of what you know to be the milky way. You would have loved to see it. I, er, probably would have done that on our first date. It was quite the romantic affair, ha ha.”

You’re surprised to find that you believe her, that you’d do away with scientific evidence in an instant, completely under her spell. Yes, you would have loved that, to do that with her. You grab her hand, hard, resolve stronger than anything you’ve experienced in years and years welling up in your chest.

“Kanaya, I’d like for you to take me on that date. I would very much like to fly across the sky with you and make love to you in the midst of stars-” she gives a cute little peep at that. “-and I will now make it my mission to get you to that point.”

She rolls against you once more, holding your hand close against her chest. “Rose, I know you are strong, but you cannot push yourself like that. I had thousands of worshipers, all supplying me with a steady power supply of faith and exploration, and nothing big remains to discover in my name. Humanity has found all you can in your current state, and I will most likely remain a dried up husk of myself until we become space-faring.”

You don’t argue. She’s sensible, after all, and that was indeed an ill-founded proposal. But your inner child, the irrational Rose-self that no matter how hard you try to suppress always manages to pop up and get in your way, says ‘no, I _will_ do this. I will make Kanaya a god again with my own two hands.’

You shake the thought away. “What is the second thing you wanted to mention? About your legend.”

“Oh, yes, well, this one’s rather embarrassing but,” she itches the back of her neck, looking away from you. “I had a very elaborate affair with the god of luck. It was quite the story. Told very frequently around campfires.”

You can imagine that. A reflection of other myths you know, a tale of jealousy and sacrifice and love… Riveting. “God of luck? Was it a _man_? Kanaya… I’m appalled. Here I thought you were rational.”

“Oh pfft, no. She was the god of luck, and fortune, and lust. The last item of which posed… quite a problem. She was killed over it, actually, by another god.”

This is the kind of drama you love, that deep psychological story representing the nature of mankind. “Wonderful gossip, please dish. Tell me of your fellow gods.”

She holds up her hands in front of your face, and counts down the fingers as each god is listed off. “There were seven of us originally. Two were killed at the height of our civilization due to a tragic myth. My ex was killed towards the fall of our civilization.”

You blink, having a realization. “So that means you and three others are still kicking.”

She winces. “Not quite. The god of rage was killed sometime in the eighteenth century while he was sleeping due to a vengeance plot. But, I have confirmed most likely two still live. The first, the very loud creator god of body and command, is so dense he probably has no idea he managed to stay hidden from his friends for so long. His tribute, is, in fact, the stereotypical human bloodletting rituals, or other physical items and actions.”

“Hmm, I’m lucky I ran into you instead of him, he sounds unpleasant. Is he like you as well, unable to use his god-powers?”

“I assume not, you would be surprised at how easy human flesh is to come by in contrast to making someone explore for you. He was the one who taught me how to gain power from the blood of others, although he is much, much better at the whole process. The other god, his wife and the god of justice, I met for lunch about twenty years ago. She appears to have fallen into the role of an insane issuer of speeding tickets and plans on staying there indefinitely.”

“Oddly appropriate. What's her trick?”

“She taught me it as well, although I do not tend to use it due to the severe sacrifice it requires on the giver's end. She eats minds, in a way. When the human agrees to the process, they are hers body and soul. Similar to a puppet.”

You're silent for a bit. “I pity the fool who would fall into that trap.”

You lay with her, talking more of godhood and her stories and the nature of the world and how her memories don’t quite line up with it. You’re not frightened of her, and that almost concerns you. You should be scared of a mythical creature like this, but she seems so human, so imperfectly perfect that there’s no fear present in you. She’s funny and adorable and awkward and smart and you think you might be falling in love with her a little.

Or perhaps it’s because she took your virginity and you’re simply confused? Took your virginity _in space_ and you’re simply confused? Perhaps sleeping with her some more will clear things up. Cue seedy laugh.

You while away the rest of the day together, simply hanging about lazily in your underwear, laughing and talking and being so happy you’re surprised flowers aren’t growing out of the walls in the rose-tinted haze of life. You spend the night as well, and find out she sleeps as soundly as the dead. Which is good, because you’re a very light sleeper, and if it didn’t hit you with big flashing lights that you made the right choice in girlfriends, then that small detail managed to solidify it.

You repeat certain adult activities once again in the morn. There’s far less ‘wow, space’ this time, more like the illusion of small stars floating against your skin in the light of the dawn. You decide a Pinterest photographer would kill a man to get a snap of how gorgeous your lovemaking looks. You ask Kanaya about her ability, and it appears she’s unable to turn it off due to “strong emotional impact.” Wonderful. And you mean that.

You’re forced back to your dorm in the evening, due to homework procrastination, and you give her a very long, starry goodbye kiss in front of your building. Complete with tongue. You’ve never been more proud walk-of-shaming into your room in yesterday’s clothes.

Rumors travel quick amongst your college friends and acquaintances, of your striking, beautiful girlfriend, and they all ask to be introduced. You hush them, say, “perhaps on the weekend, she’s older and has a regular job,” and the utter awe that spreads across their faces brings up a well of pride in you.

One week in March, you discover Kanaya doesn’t do well at alcohol-fueled parties. Which you expected, but you assumed that if you chaperoned her through introductions she wouldn’t emulate classic “wallflower” behavior. However, despite your best intentions, she ends up feeling awkward and you ditch the fraternity party streak to go have drunken space makeouts in the 2nd floor English department utility closet.

Kanaya does not have nearly as many friends as you do, but the ones she has are very close. You’re more of a casual acquaintance picker-upper, with a propensity to drive away more people that you attach yourself to due to your “nagging psychoanalyst” personality type. You tend not to form strong bonds due to your snarkiness, but Kanaya is the reverse of that. Her friend group is eclectic, some old, some young, who gather for a small gardening club twice a week. You have to say, you get along swimmingly with the catlady spinsters who are alarmingly fond of petunias. They find your name cute.

You introduce her to your remaining three high school friends on Skype before the end of sophomore year. Dave reacts as expected, asks Kanaya, “how’s the all-you-can-eat taco bar?” to which she responds, “what?” and you respond by hanging up with no further comment. John gets excited, asks her a million questions about her life, and manages to Rickroll her (although she doesn’t get it). Jade, whom you neglected to communicate with since sometime in February, talks gardening jargon with Kanaya and you read a book as they chat for seemingly hours.

You feel like you’re losing touch with Jade. It’s unfortunate, growing older. You wonder if John will follow.

Just before finals in May, you get word from Dave that his father died in an accident. You have to glean this piece of information from three paragraphs of elaborate, punctuation-less metaphors sent over Facebook, but it changes your summer break plan drastically. You let Kanaya know you won’t be staying in Florida, that you’ll be heading to his apartment to keep him company in the next few lonely months.

She accepts it in stride, and offers her condolences. When you relay this to Dave, he just tells you it wasn’t a big deal and you know he’s lying, but you simply quirk an eyebrow which conveys that, watch him sweat, and settle yourself into the guest bedroom for the summer.

You spend your girlfriend-free, jobless days (thank you, exorbitantly rich mother) writing short stories about gods and monsters next to Dave on the couch, and your equally free nights driving an hour out of Austin to the observatory. You drag Dave along once a month to the member-exclusive star parties to get some fresh air into him, and he doesn’t resist. In fact, you swear he _enjoys_ clinking wine glasses with middle aged mostly-white Texans and flirting with housewives. Whatever floats his boat, you suppose.

Kanaya visits once for three days, as it was hard for her to get off work, and you eat from a giant spaghetti vat which Dave prepared for all three of them. You’re positive Dave likes her, he doesn’t make “knees weak, mom’s spaghetti” for just anybody.

Jade doesn’t come to visit any more often than usual, (you suppose she took Dave’s “I’m fine” at face value, since the girl is oddly dense when it comes to the nuances of what people vocalize) and when she does visit it’s not for you. But one night, she comes out to the observatory with you and Dave, and helps you calibrate one of the telescopes which you use to take an image.

Another undiscovered variable star turns out to be in that image. You have to say, you’re somewhat jealous of Jade and her inherent scientific abilities. 

You end up catching two of them over your summer excursions, and get them added to the catalog. You watch Kanaya, over Skype, come back from looking like she’s on the brink of death to more of a ‘slightly malnourished model’ appearance and it makes you feel good. Not quite as good as that sense of discovery you get, but still good.

You head back to Florida for fall semester, picking up once again with more Astronomy courses. These get intense, with heavy math and heavy work, and you’re relieved when you get to set down physics homework and pick up your English homework. But it’s less depressing than last year, now that you know and understand what you’re after in your major.

When you come back from a January study-abroad trip to the remote, starry parts Ireland with a slew of minuscule discoveries, you eschew dorm life for living with Kanaya in her apartment. 

Spring semester flies by in a joyful arrangement of domestic bliss. You _finally_ tell Kanaya you love her, embarrassingly sober and after a year of dating, and it turns out she loves you too. Requited feelings have more of an impact than you expect on your cold icy heart, and pure emotion cracks your soul in two as you burst into stereotypical tears in her arms. She doesn’t even judge you for it, because of course she doesn’t, and _gods_ you love her so dearly.

You don’t think about her immortal aspect. You’ve got time with her, as long as you live, and that’s more than good enough.

You manage to snag a highly competitive summer internship at the Rosemary observatory. While most of it is clerical duties, it gives you time to observe and explore and write, and nab a few more nutritious pieces of star for yourself and Kanaya. When you tell Dave, he says, “shit, girl, here I am dropping out of community college for the third fucking time and you’re on your way to becoming Galileo. Am I ever jealous.” You know he means it as a joke, but it makes you feel overly guilty for not heading to Texas this year. He needs comfort, so you text Jade for the first time in months and ask her to visit him frequently, which she complies to.

When senior year starts, you’re well on your way to graduating with full honors and decorations. You start looking for jobs early, sometime in January, applying to everything you’re barely qualified for at NASA. Copy-writing jobs, observing jobs, clerical jobs, anything. You’re not as “wanted” a candidate as the math-heavy stars of the astronomy department, but you’re hoping your excellent people skills manage to pull you through where the nerdy kids falter. 

They don’t, and you don’t manage to get a single job at NASA. You can’t help but feel dejected until your advisor suggests graduate school for Astronomy. It’s not like you lack the resources, the money, or the drive to discover, so you take your GRE and get stellar recommendations from your professors and send them across the country.

You get an acceptance letter in April.

Berkeley. _Score_.

You talk to Kanaya about it, and it turns out she’d always wanted to try living in California, since “the 70s made it fashionable.” You don’t doubt it, and it makes you exceedingly giddy to know she’d pack up her life and move for you. You don’t love her any less than the day you revealed to her your feelings, and it shakes your jaded worldview to know that cheesy romance fairytales do, apparently, come true.

Your mother comes to your graduation, hugs you and tells you she’s proud for a literal hour over catered lunch, and you’re immensely glad you wore waterproof mascara due to unwanted tears spawned from daughterly bliss. She loves Kanaya too, shakes her hand for a good five minutes and says, “You’d better make my kiddo happy, or I’ll sock ya one! Wonk wonk.” Kanaya takes this seriously. You can’t help but laugh.

Summer is spent packing and arranging things, scanning for discount apartments on Craigslist, helping Kanaya fix up her resume, and in August you pack it up and roadtrip to California. Kanaya had somehow never been on a roadtrip before this moment, so you make it a point to pull over at every seedy tourist trap sign on the highway, which always ends up going like,

“Kanaya, look, the world’s largest pecan. Oh, I just _must_ see it, pull over or I will throw a fit.”

“Rose, no, you do not even like pecans. I know this because I attempted to make a pie and you spat it out in quite the unladylike fashion.”

“But I want to stare my enemy in the eye. The Art of War, Kanaya, I must know thine enemy if I have to do battle.”

“Okay, fine, but only because you made me snort with your comment. You must not tell a soul of what my nostrils do when I laugh.”

“My lips are sealed, beautiful. Until I may spit upon the largest nut in Texas, that is.”

You move into a small, somewhat dingy apartment that is three times the amount of money Kanaya was paying in Florida before. But it’s close enough to bike to campus, in a good neighborhood, and has a lovely view of the bay (if you squint). Kanaya gets a job a little ways out of San Francisco, in a graphic design company with a salary far more substantial than her Floridian startup.

Life is good. Life is funny, and good, and when arrive to your first class of graduate school you decide that this is the happiest you’ve been since you were a child playing video games with your mother.

“Are you sure you’re not that god of luck and lust, Kanaya?” you say, one night in bed with her, tracing your finger across her collarbone. “Because I feel like I’ve won every lottery in existence. Also, you’re so hot, Jesus.”

Kanaya thinks about this. “No, the god of luck is certainly dead. But I will take that as a compliment.”

Your research period turns out to be more exciting than you expected, monitoring a certain cluster of galaxies for temperature changes and composition. Little discoveries add up one after another, giving Kanaya a healthy glow and fuller cheeks that you make sure to pinch every chance you get. You bike every day, get uncharacteristically fit due to your choice of transportation and the sheer amount of hills you have to navigate, and take Kanaya out to yuppie foodie places after classes to drink wine and eat fusion cooking. You make a few friends in your research group, and on Fridays you get drunk together and watch avant garde films.

One week, in December, you make a discovery.

And it’s not just a small one, not just from a picture or a temperature change, this one’s game changing. Late at night, alone and working hard in the lab, you discover that some of your calculations don’t line up. You perform some space detective work and data crunching to find out that for these past few months you haven’t _just_ been looking at a single cluster of galaxies. There’s a second, hidden one, when imagined on a 2D plane is placed directly “behind” the other, and you have a bunch of data to prove it, as well of what sort of planets and stars are located inside of the cluster.

You _know_ no ones seen it before. You _know_ you’re correct. You sit back in your uncomfortable office chair, pen falling to the ground from between your fingertips, and with a shaking hand pull out your phone and dial up another girl on your research team.

A brand new set of galaxies? A brand new set of galaxies for which you have already collected data on? If this is proven right, you’re _at the very least_ going to be immortalized on the front page website of fucking Berkeley. What more could a girl hope for. You’re smiling through the entire conversation with your co-researcher, and when she screams into the phone with excitement, you almost want to follow suit.

It takes you a week to draft up the paper. Your advisor approves it, professors applaud you, and you’re chosen to give a talk on it to a small group of astronomy savants. A top-dog from NASA congratulates you afterwards, gives you his card, and not even your immense self-control can stop the stupid grin which spreads across your face when you shake his hand.

You don’t want to tell Kanaya until it’s all submitted, until the paper is all ready to get reviewed. You wanted to make sure you’re correct before you bring it up, and while it hasn’t gone through the many months of the scientific approval process yet, you believe it good enough. You print the many pages off in the lab, then write "For my dear Kanaya, as always, a discovery from me to you. Merry Christmas." And in a shamefully unironic sentimental display which warns you of an impending ‘Dammit, I’m becoming my mother’ phase, you wrap it up in some Norwegian sweater-style paper.

You wonder how big of a discovery this will be for her. A new set of galaxies is no small matter in the astronomy world. Will you unlock new powers? You feel like you’re leveling her up in a video game, which you find funny. You’ll have to tell her that joke.

The paper is so thick you’re forced to strap it to the inside of your basket with your belt, and you make sure to ride your bike home as slow as possible so your present for Kanaya won’t go flying away. That thing cost ten whole dollars to print.

There’s a street you have to cross, a busy thing with a left-turn lane, where drivers are always in a rush to turn. It’s incredibly foolish, cars hit other cars there all the time due to a need for speed, so you have to give yourself some extra caution when crossing. You make your quick look left and right, and start peddling across the intersection when that gender-neutral walking icon lights up.

You realize, as you’re midway through and hearing the skidding of wheels against the pavement, you forgot to make eye contact with the driver turning into your street. They probably weren’t paying attention to someone crossing, were too focused on squeezing in between a tiny space in traffic. And you were too concerned with your paper to keep your head up a little longer.

“Oh, shit,” you think in light speed, as you look into the headlights of an SUV screaming into you. “And everything was all going so _well_ , too.”

It hits you unbelievably fast. You get the feeling like every one of organs are slamming against the wall of your left side, attempting to break out in a slew of gore. It hurts more than anything, and you’re not sure if you’re screaming or your brain decided to shut off access to your vocal cords due to the sudden trauma you’re experiencing. 

Feeling shuts off as soon as you go flying, your bike crumpling into a heap of scrap metal against you, and when you hit the pavement at the end of the first lengthy bounce against concrete, you don’t even need to be conscious to know that it’s all over for you.

You don’t have time to be sad, don’t even have time to flash back through your life events. All you have time to do, before all your vision goes black, is attempt to groan in a pitiful display of how fed up you are with the universe throwing this shitty plot development at you. And, oh look at that, another plot twist! You don’t have the ability to groan, since you are now a dead heap of Rose crumpled and tangled against the pavement.

Well, fuck.

That certainly was untimely.


	7. The Punchline

Kanaya told you about the existence of the immortal soul, but you didn’t _quite_ believe that leap in logic. The fact that you’re still here after your death, in a “physical” form, is completely mind-boggling. Science, not even any one particular discipline of it, would have a field day with knowing this factoid about the life-death cycle.

Once upon a time you did, in fact, ask her what happened after death so you weren’t entirely unprepared. She answered with, “Your patron god generally had an afterlife for you, and you would go there. How terrible or well-kept your ‘death’ was depended entirely on our whims.” You always wondered what would happen to you as a developing agnostic after learning that small piece of information. Apparently, judging by your current situation: nothing. Nothing is happening. You’re not moving, not able to move, not anything. Or perhaps you’re waiting for Kanaya to spirit you away, perhaps the universe was confused by your superior body worshiping skills and assumed it was regular worship for your lovely girlfriend.

Nevertheless, you are currently still on this Earth, hovering just slightly above your crumpled body’s chest, low to the ground. Your vision is clear and perfect, but you do not feel or sense a ‘spirit face’ or ‘spirit nose’ or any other bodily parts. You simply _are_ , and what you _are_ is infuriatingly little.

You can, kind of, with a huge struggle of mental effort, move the field of vision you’re observing the world through, rotating it as though it was a camera based on a stationary point. You make excellent use of this, watching the road shut down, emergency responders arrive, your less-gruesome-than-you-thought-it-would-look body get bagged up, the witnesses to your accident get interviewed, and finally watch as the whole scene gathers itself up and goes away, traffic resuming over your “head.”

And as you look up at the dead night sky and the ever passing-over of motor-vehicles and bright streetlamps, the severity of your situation hits you as fast and as hard as that car just did.

You’re dead. Really, really, really, dead. You’re not coming back.

 _Balls_.

Your mother will sob. Your mother will sob and sob and sob, will come up from Reno to make you a mausoleum worthy of a Romantic heroine, to hug her other child for a week straight, then disappear somewhere abroad and never visit the United States again. Your friends from college will receive word through Facebook, will be sad they couldn’t make it to the funeral, and move on with their lives after mere days. John will think it’s trickery, laugh your death off as a way of recovery, after he tries to hide his tears at your funeral. Your friends from the lab, they will cry, they will dedicate the paper to you, hug professors, find comfort in your research. And Dave… Oh, Dave, Dave, you don’t want to think about Dave just yet.

It takes a little over a day for Kanaya to come get you, all twenty four hours of which are filled with a stream of paranoid thoughts about your situation, spawned by your over-analytic mind attempting to comprehend what life would be like without you. It’s a terrible thing to face one’s death, and you are very glad Kanaya arrives when she does. At first you believe she is a hallucination, streetlight shining down upon her figure, then you realize that is an absurd notion as hallucinations are entirely dependent upon you having a brain. Which, last time you checked, you don’t have.

She crosses the street, and you watch her ankles stop in front of you. Wordlessly, she scoops you up into her hand. You’re apparently quite small and round, and you can actually feel the heat of her palm against you, which confuses the bejeesus out of you to how any of this is working. She holds you close to her stomach, turns on her heel, walks down the darkened sidewalk, and gets into her car with you.

She places you in the front seat, which you find absolutely ridiculous, then makes a motion to buckle the seat-belt over your incorporeal form before she realizes how absurd this whole thing is. She freezes up and stares into your field of vision blankly, before very suddenly and sharply bursting into tears.

“Oh, Rose,” she sobs, her voice wilting. “What have I done to you?”

You want nothing more than to reach out to her, to brush the tears from her cheeks, whisper to her that all will turn out all right even if you never believe it. 

Her tears fall thick and huge, dripping through your soul in warm bursts of feeling. “Where am I going to put you, Rose? I do not have a place to keep you! I did not mean to make your mortal soul _mine_ like this. You do not deserve to stay here! You deserve grand fanfares or infinite libraries or a beautiful light or a good next life and I… I cannot give you that. I don’t have anything left.”

She collapses back and away from you, and you’re forced to slowly rotate your field of vision to keep her in your sight. She’s slumped against the driver’s seat, eyes closed in defeat, desperation in every heavy breath she takes. You wish more than anything to call out to her, to make some snarky comment to make her smile, to flash beams of soul-light at her, something. You don’t want to watch her mourn your own death when she knows you’re there.

After many, many minutes of silence, Kanaya starts the car.

When she begins to drive up and down narrow hills, she starts to rant in her articulate Kanaya-way. She babbles about what happened in the past day since your death. Tears are on the edge of her voice as she talks, but she manages to keep her eyes clear for the drive.

“I was contacted by your mother a few hours ago,” she says. “I attempted to call your brother to ascertain he would not do anything rash, but I was not able to contact him. I will try again tomorrow.”

He won’t pick up, you know it. He is most likely drowning his sorrows by staying up for 48 hours straight drawing obscene amounts of terrible internet comics.

“Your human mother requested I partake in the memorial service, and I intend to do so. Would you like to go to your own funeral, Rose? I am assuming yes.”

Of course yes, you want to go to your own funeral. You didn’t grow up as a flighty goth princess for shits and giggles, this is the ultimate and final goal of your twelve year old self. Think of all the hot gossip about yourself you’re going to overhear… it might actually cheer you up.

“Rose,” she continues. “I am not entirely sure what to do with you. You are going to get very bored very quickly, if you have not already, and I am not sure if my presence alone is enough to keep you sane. I think the next order of business will be to attempt to find my old friend and fellow god, who might be able to construct a body to fit your soul. Assuming he will have enough power, and assuming he is still alive.”

She runs a frustrated hand through her hair, leaning forward against the steering wheel. “But if his wife cannot find him, his wife whom excels in investigation, how am I supposed to?”

A good question, and one you wished you knew the answer to.

You arrive at your apartment, or you suppose it just belongs to Kanaya now, and she carries you in. She sets you down on the table, makes herself some overpriced coffee despite it being three in the morning, and spends the next few hours sitting next to you in silence. She doesn’t sleep or close her eyes, even as the blue light of dawn works its way through the windows. You’re thankful for the silence with her, you suppose, it is far better to absorb the gravity of your own death in the company of someone you love. 

It’s well into the morning when there’s a ring for your door. Kanaya gives you a quizzical look, her eyes baggy and bloodshot, and gets up to let in whatever visitor arrived at the apartment entrance. You wait for a few minutes, an act you suppose you’re getting used to, until Kanaya returns with a battered package in her hands. In all the deathly hubbub, you had forgotten you got your girlfriend a present.

She doesn’t wait to sit back down at the table. In the midst of the hallway, with shaking hands, she carefully slices open the Christmas paper on the ends of the package with her nail, and shucks it off neatly. She lets the wrapping fall to the ground in a neat boxy shape as she reads, stunned, the dedication note you left for her. Her mouth parts, her eyes flick to you then back to your paper, and she begins to cry again.

If you were mortal, you certainly would have been able to avoid tearing up until this moment. This, the way Kanaya is cracking in two, would break you as well. You would cry with her this time, you’re sure of it. You watch her quietly sob, pitiful and depressing, and you have a terrible feeling this will be a repeating theme throughout the next few weeks. Son of a bitch, death _sucks_.

She glides to the table, sits down, and begins to read. You want to tease her, ‘Not even a thank you? Where are your manners? Didn’t your mother teach you better?’ but alas, you remain seated and immobile on the shitty table you bought from Ikea last year.

You did put in a few small scientific deviances for Kanaya’s perusal, silly little metaphors to help her visualize your jargon-filled explanation, but it’s still a bit hard for the uneducated to understand. You expected to be there with her, after all, giving her grand gestures and exaggerations to make her laugh and give her power piece by piece. It takes a long time for her to get through the many pages, as she constantly needs to double back and flip to the appendix and Google various keywords, but you watch comprehension slowly light up her tired face over the course of a few hours.

When she shuts the paper with a soft ‘thunk,’ you could not be more proud of her. Her smile is large and beaming as well. She looks at you, beautiful jade eyes sparkling with more than just tears, and says,

“My goodness, a whole galaxy? You certainly were busy, were you not? That was very, very big, Rose. That was the biggest discovery I have received in centuries. I feel fantastic, and I want to show you my appreciation. I feel like I can… Well, let us just say, I know what I must do with this gift of yours.”

She stands up with such brevity the matching Ikea chair is knocked to the ground, and she doesn’t bother to pick it up. Her sadness is gone, replaced only by determination, and you can basically see confidence radiating off of her face. And in one, heart-stopping moment (if you had a heart), Kanaya lights up.

The world goes pitch black, with the exception of her whole self, bright white shining skin glowing painfully bright through patterns of brown, horns spiraling grand and foreboding from the top of her head, eyes bursting with holy green flame. Her dress billows in some unseen wind, fabric fluttering far into the dark, and you’re terrified. Really. After all this time? You love her, you know her, you don’t even have blood to pound through your ears and you can’t even be killed and you are _still_ frightened and in awe of your god-girlfriend.

She reaches for you, manicured hand with nails dripping jade, grabbing your soul from its very core. You feel every fingertip inside you as though she were squeezing your organs. She pulls on you, and you stretch into a different shape, bigger and familiar. She pulls again, in a different direction, and you feel your face and head and shoulders fall into shape, her hands molding you a body quick and simple. You never knew Kanaya was good at clay sculpture, but it doesn’t surprise you. That girl sure knew her way around a topiary.

She steps back from you, hands raised towards you, and you notice her palms are singed black with severe burns. As you look at her, blinking your new eyelids, you watch the damaged flesh grow over itself with splotches of glowing white. You reach out towards her in confusion, and stop when you notice your own hand shining with that same piercing brightness.

“Be careful,” she says. Her voice returned to that godly form you remember from years ago, far away and echoing into your ears across space and time. “You’re quite hot.”

“I know,” you joke, and you’re surprised to find your voice sounds the same. Like it had to spend millennia developing on a far away planet, then shoot across the universe to make it out of your vocal chords in time. “Now, please explain what you’ve done to me, beautiful.”

“You will figure it out,” she says, then blows you a kiss. “I will see you soon, if you call me, that is.”

“Kanaya, that is an irritatingly vague answer and you know I do not appreciate those.”

She smiles. “You never believed me when I said I had an excellent throw.”

“You couldn’t throw a softball three fee- _holy shit-_ ”

You’re interrupted by Kanaya grabbing your wrist, yanking you towards her, and your body suddenly deciding it weighed as much as a feather. You crack back behind her like a whip, and you barely get your head turned around in time to watch her use the leverage gained to hurl you into the blank black sky.

You scream. 

Inertia takes control of whatever sort of stomach you have as you’re sent hurdling impossibly fast into infinite darkness. You’re turned all over yourself, not sure of where you exist or where you’re moving except that you are somehow fucked smack-dab between free-falling and getting shot upwards. Keeping your eyes open or closed doesn’t help, as everything is equally dark either way, but at least with them open you can see the light of your glowing hands and arms and feet flailing in every which way like Dave’s terrible comic characters. He warned you about the infinite darkness, man, he told you- no, wait, he did not.

You sense yourself slowing down by the urge to vomit drastically decreasing, and before you know it, you come to a stop. You stand yourself up, as best you are able to without a ground, glowing with light and… uh… possibly naked. You look like a rather sexless Sailor Moon transformation at the moment. 

You wait for something to happen.

Something does.

The universe bursts from within you, red fire and flowering liquid heat exploding from your stomach, the dark world lighting up before your very eyes. Countless stars expand around you, every piece of your vision taken up by little pinpricks of light, and you realize, with a gasp of relief, what’s happening to you.

Kanaya put the stars in the sky after all. You doubter, you.

And, _oh_ , you could cry. Cry beads of light from your glowing eyes. You feel warm as you watch your birth around you, watch your home, your core, your beautiful yellow sun take shape around you, watch a billion years of creation condense into one gorgeous, time lapsed moment. And you’re surprised at the process, surprised that human science actually got a lot of things right, as you watch yourself be born in high speed.

You _are_ this object, but you’re also _you_. You’re a ghost in the machine of a recently birthed lump of fire and plasma, the life where there is none. Space shoots through the metaphor of you, and you realize that while you’re bound to your new body, you also have room to explore. This is the ultimate sandbox game, isn’t it? The ultimate telescope, the ultimate way to collect data and observe and be the grand light you always wanted to be. You reach out your arms to the sky, feeling wholesome and strong, aiming straight for the milky way.

It all happens so fast, like when you make love to Kanaya and she’s doped up on power, planets and stars and light whooshing past you in a glorious burst of SFX. You realize through this high-powered dreamscape that you have literally, _literally_ the whole universe to look at, insurmountable amounts of planets to observe and watch, and you also realize why your fellow afterlifers never “call home” any longer. They are, in fact, probably busy with their infinite space playground.

There’s only one planet you want to look at right now, only one you want to get down and dirty with at the moment. The rest can wait. Can wait, and wait, and wait, because you have your god to give thanks to.

R.L. phone home. Here we go.

You rocket your spirit towards Earth, or perhaps you rocket Earth towards your spirit, and it only takes a few seconds of spatial finagling to angle yourself to California, to San Fransisco, to your cramped little apartment, to leaning over Kanaya, her beautiful face under yours, your bare white feet hovering over the ground, your calm fire cascading off your back.

She smiles. You do too.

You’ve got no doubt that astronomers will be stunned at the recent appearance of a new space object far far away, a new speck of light hitting earth and there to stay. After all…

You are the star. It’s you.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Stay tuned for the next installment of the Underworld series: "John Egbert and the Fall of Man" which I am hyyyyyyppppppeeed for.
> 
> DVD EXTRAS:  
> [Tumblr announcement art](http://oxfordroulette.tumblr.com/post/116697146842/rose-lalonde-and-her-untimely-death-is-now)  
> [Short AU of this AU where _Rose_ is the god.](http://oxfordroulette.tumblr.com/post/116965916847/kanaya-maryam-and-the-tagged-for-body-horror)


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